YAGM: A Year of Accompaniment, Relationships and Beautiful Things

Big words can be REALLY scary. Examples: accompaniment, solidarity, year-long journey in international service. Okay, that last one is a phrase but you get the idea.Most of the time we find things scary because we don’t know a lot about them or because we haven’t seen them working in our own lives. And these specific words just happen to be some of the biggest themes and driving theology for the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program.

I had never thought about what any of these words meant, honestly, until I was sitting in Chicago for orientation getting ready to live in a different country for a whole year. But really there is only so much “getting ready” you can do before you just need to be pushed into the deep end. Once in that deep end I realized that the more learning that happened the easier it was to float. I learned from my host father how to tell when an avocado was just ripe, and how to slice it up and put it on toast.(Avocadoes, by the way, are literally as big as your head in Southern Africa.) My host sisters showed me how to use the public transport system and when I inevitably got lost, how to call my family and have them talk to the drivers when no one on the bus could understand my siSwati. I learned about the history and the struggles and the joys of a country I barely even knew existed. And I also learned (or re-learned) that no two journeys are quite the same.

The YAGM program sends young adults all over the world to live out the ministry of the church--not to “save people”, but to walk alongside our brothers and sisters and be changed. In 2017-2018 I served in The Kingdom of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).There were 8 members of my cohort—4 of which served in Eswatini and 4 in South Africa. They became the family I didn’t know I needed. I lived with a loving and beautiful host family in a small rural town called Pigg’s Peak. I taught first grade at The Light Primary School and went to church at the Pigg’s Peak Lutheran Parish with my host family. But where I was, and what I was doing is not the important take away of this. There are a lot of volunteer programs in the world that tend to showcase what they are doing. What illnesses they are curing, what schools they are building, what communities they are “fixing”. YAGM allows young adults to simply be. To exist in a space that is not their own, and to be a sponge that absorbs what is happening around them. It’s an opportunity to practice accompaniment—meeting someone where they are at and accepting all parts of them. It’s an opportunity to practice solidarity—letting a person, or community, or country know that you are with them and support them. It’s an opportunity to practice living in international service—to live simply, stop filling our lives with meaningless busy work, and love ourselves, our faith, and each other.

Now you may be wondering “You are trying to get people to see how fun and awesome this program is, why did you start off talking about fear and complicated social concepts?!” I will be completely honest, YAGM isn’t easy. It’s one of the most challenging, complicated, messy, beautiful things I have ever gotten to be a part of. It will break your heart wide open and let nothing go un-felt. And without it I would not be the person I am today.

If you have even the slightest interest in applying for this program, PLEASE feel free to reach out to me (I promise I’m nice!) You can email me anytime.

Submitted by Abby Madris, YAGM Alumae and member of Town Line, Alden in the NIagara Frontier Conference