Sending My Daughters to HOPE Youth Corps Has Changed the Way They See Their Faith and the World

My name is Michelle Charon. My husband and I have a full house with four teenage daughters.
Our older three girls are disciples of Christ, and the youngest one is on her way to making the
same decision to have her own relationship with God, and become a disciple herself. We are a
busy household, and love serving in the Kingdom of God. My husband is a deacon and
together we lead our local Chapter which helps serve with HOPE worldwide in our local
community, as well as helping to lead our Youth and Family Ministry. We have strived to raise
our girls to love serving, and pray that they are drawn to those in need. We also pray they
continue to use their lives to serve those less fortunate than themselves, to show Jesus’ love
where hearts are hurting and in need of the truth, to show people that God loves them, is
paying attention, and will give them comfort through disciples who are willing to show His love.
We have been so fortunate to have made the decision to send our girls to HOPE Youth Corps
every year. Our older three have been on a total of seven trips between them, and our
youngest cannot wait until it is her turn to go and serve when she is old enough.

In sending our girls on these trips to Denver, Philadelphia (twice), Mexico, Vancouver, Dallas,
and Bolivia so far, we have seen changes in them that only God can provide. Once their eyes
were opened to serving in such a deep and powerful way, and how much good it does for their
hearts and characters, they were hooked on serving with HOPE worldwide !

They have seen things that we could not possibly have shown them while we live in the suburbs
of Massachusetts in our comfortable home with our easy lives. They so look forward to
traveling each summer to a place where they learn something new and challenging about the
people they serve, as well as the spiritual lessons they find, as they give their hearts to the
people and each other, rely on God, work harder than they thought possible, give more of
themselves than they knew they had, and gain so much more as they exhaust themselves to
meet all of the needs.

My girls have come back from HOPE Youth Corps completely different from these experiences.
They love how spiritual the whole crew can be, the new friends they make that love God as
much as they do, the discipleship groups they attend where they can be real, learn to be more
giving, open up about how much it hurts to know they can’t do it all or make everything better
in one trip.

The bond they form with the people they serve alongside is a very powerful thing. They make
friends that become best friends, closer than they could ever imagine, by having gone through
the same serving experiences. They meet future college roommates, learn to love people they
never would have thought would be a good friend, laugh until it hurts about the memories they
make, Skype with their new 20 best friends after the trip is long over, cry because they miss the
bond they made in that new place, fly across the country to visit those new best friends, and
thank God every day for these experiences.

We will forever be grateful for the experiences that HOPE Youth Corps brings and the blessings
that come from serving and bonding, as well as hard work. We have seen our girls cry about
the people they meet that are so in need. They have kept in touch with the children they
mentored, sent packages to the orphanages they’ve left behind, prayed for the families and the
lives they’ve touched, and smiled from so many good memories of times that only they can
understand.

If there is one major thing that we think has been the most powerful in helping shape our
daughters into the strong, faithful women they are today, outside of our family, hands down it
would be the spiritual growth they gain from serving and the amazing job that HOPE Youth
Corps has done in making these trips possible.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all of the volunteers and leaders who work with
HOPE Youth Corps. Your work is not in vain, and your sacrifice is changing the lives of the other
volunteers like my girls, as well as changing lives all over the world of those who benefit from
these service trips.

We cannot wait to see our lives change once again as we look forward to joining in as a family
on one of the many opportunities to serve on one of the Volunteer Corps open to families.