(Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash)
MADISON — For the past seven summers, the middle and high schoolers of Love Begins Here (LBH), along with their leaders, have performed more than 45,000 hours of doing “small things with great love.”
Love Begins Here is an apostolate of the Diocese of Madison Office of Evangelization and Catechesis. It provides youth with an opportunity to encounter Jesus Christ in a life-changing way through weeklong, local mission trips where they live in community and continue God’s work on earth.
This year, out of LBH’s seven host parishes for four high school groups, two middle school groups, and a “Rising 9th Grade” group, six of them were new to the program. The new parishes and cities were examples of the growth LBH has sustained in the past seven summers.
“It’s incredible,” said LBH Mission Director Lindsay Becher. “Going to the new locales gives the missionaries a chance to “[show] the communities and new people what Love Begins Here is.”
Growth in faith
The growth isn’t only in the geographic area covered, but in the faith lives of the missionaries as well. The final week of the summer, the fourth high school week, was at one of the new parishes, St. Bernard Parish in Madison.
While the location was new, many of the missionaries were not.
One of them, recent Madison LaFollette High School graduate John Rottier — a member of St. Bernard Parish — has been an LBH missionary for all seven of its years.
“It [Love Begins Here] has changed a lot, but the main thing I always keep coming back for is the people and their willingness to be here and help out,” said Rottier. “Having other people be here and want to be here definitely makes you want to be here even more to be with them.”
“I like helping people and then over the years building the relationships with the other missionaries. Just spreading God in word and deed,” said sixth year LBH veteran and recent Edgewood High School graduate Noelle Klitzke – a member of Good Shepherd Parish in Madison.
More than just pulling weeds
Klitzke and Rottier — one half of an LBH car group also including recent Baraboo High School graduate Hannah Dobson, herself a fourth year LBH-er and member of St. Joseph Parish in Baraboo, and first year LBH-er Dorothea Wedwick, senior at Sauk Prairie High School and member of Divine Mercy Parish in Sauk City, spent their first day in the field at a work site near Mount Horeb.
Their tasks, led by car leader Blaine Hechimovich, were pulling weeds and other ground care at the hermitage of Schoenstatt Sister Patricia Vinje.
Facing challenges from stubborn roots in the ground and an 80-plus degree day with the sun beating down on them, the missionaries did their work with great love.
“Doing it on this mission trip, doing it for people, and doing it with people helps and it makes it a lot more fun to do – it makes the experience that much better,” said Dobson.
“It’s going really well,” said the LBH rookie Wedwick. “All the people here are great and it’s great working with amazing people and just doing great work in the name of God.”
The group was able to focus at their tasks with reminders from Hechimovich on the importance of their work and offering it up as a sacrifice.
“This is definitely the strongest week of the year for me for my faith,” said Rottier. “There’s so much acceptance of your faith because everyone has the same faith and that really helps you strengthen it and in all the activities you do.”
Coming back every year
As Love Begins Here nears a full year — 52 weeks of service — in the past seven years, this milestone serves as a visible sign of the growth of the mission and also a celebration of those missionaries who come back every year.
“Whenever I come back, I know maybe I won’t see a specific person I’ve met at LBH, but I’ll know at least a quarter of the people from past LBHs and that’s so cool because it means that once you come, you keep coming back, you’re not going to just leave,” said Rottier.
“I’ve liked all the groups I’ve been with,” said Klitzke. “Everyone’s nice. You create relationships that, even though you leave, and then when you come back next summer some of them are here and you’ve never left.”
“The people are the best people you can find,” added Rottier. “It’s an experience I don’t think you can have anywhere else.”
For more information on Love Begins Here, go to https://www.madisondiocese.org/ministry/oec/lovebeginshere