Love Begins Here (LBH) provides middle and high school youth with an opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ in a life-changing way through week-long local mission trips, where students work in Catholic community and continue His work on earth.
Inspired by the life and witness of St. Teresa of Calcutta, LBH invites teens to serve those in need in their own parish communities, allowing them to work on a small scale with a larger perspective, with the belief that no task is too small in the eyes of the Lord when filled with great love.
Looking at the numbers
LBH launched in the summer of 2009 with 56 missionaries and after 13 years of growth, during the summer of 2021, more than 600 missionaries served on LBH trips throughout the Diocese of Madison.
To date, LBH has given more than 130,000 hours of service to those in need, both spiritually and materially, doing anything from weeding and planting, to visiting nursing home residents, cleaning, and yard work, mostly simple acts with great love for those in the community.
The numbers above are impressive in and of themselves, but what is truly amazing are all of the young lives that are touched because of attending one of these mission trips, all of this while keeping prayer at the center of it all.
Support the mission
LBH is just one of the areas that help to increase the faith of teens throughout our diocese and in order for it to continue to offer this support to our youth, we need your support.
LBH is funded, in part, through the Annual Catholic Appeal (ACA).
Your gift to the ACA will help this ministry and all areas of youth ministry in our diocese continue to grow.
If you have already made a gift to this year’s ACA, thank you for your support. If you have not, consider supporting Love Begins Here, youth ministry, and all the ministries and programs funded through the ACA.
To make a gift, visit www.madisondiocese.org/ch to donate now.
Kristen Beckett is the director of annual appeals for the Office of Stewardship and Development in the Diocese of Madison.