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In serving the homeless, young adult missionaries encounter Christ
By Lorna Cruz
Even though many young adults would define success by entry-level positions and paycheck sums, a group of 14 students and recent graduates are giving a year of service to the homeless through Christ in the City, a program established in Denver.
Christ in the City (CIC) is a holistic service program that combines charitable works, spirituality and educational advancement to train college-age Catholics how to be missionaries in the United States.
This program instills in students a formative platform, grounded in virtue and Catholic leadership, to help launch their future careers.
Having welcomed its first semester and year-long programs in August 2011, Christ in the City houses its missionaries in one community house, where they share and grow in community.
What follows are profiles of three of the missionaries.
Kirstin Kuhn
Before graduating from MIT, 22-year old Kirstin Kuhn, from Texas, knew that she wanted to give a year of service to the poor.
As her faith became a more important part of her life, she not only wanted to do service, but also devote herself to “growing in my faith and put myself in an environment that would facilitate that.”
After a FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Student) missionary dropped a Christ in the City flyer on her couch, Kuhn knew that it was a perfect match because of the spiritual and intellectual formation along with service to the poor.
Kuhn’s Christ in the City assignment is with the Catholic Medical Association. She is also engaged in street ministry in which the missionaries foster relationships with the homeless and try to satisfy their material and spiritual needs.
Her favorite aspect of Christ in the City is its deeply rooted Catholicism and the community in which it is lived out.
“It’s a beautiful gift to be living with nine other women striving for holiness, and I’m very grateful,” she said.
Working with the homeless has taught Kuhn that Christian compassion “demands that we acknowledge them and respect their dignity, no matter how awkward or weird it may seem to us.”
During her first day of street ministry, Kuhn experienced what it felt like to be ignored, simply because she was sitting with two homeless men. She learned the importance of acknowledging their presence and has since made an effort of doing so.
“Easing a fellow human being’s suffering, if only for a moment,” she said, “is certainly worth the price of a little awkwardness.”
Kalynn Webster
Kalynn Webster works with Annuncia-tion Parish and its school. She also does street ministry and outreach to the homeless.
After graduating from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, Webster worked with inner-city children as an after-school tutor, which helped her realize that “there (is) a great need here, right in my own country.”
“I also wanted to serve with a group that emphasized evangelization as part of service,” she said. “Christ in the City fit these desires exactly.”
She appreciates the amount of freedom that CIC provides, allowing her to understand the parish and street ministry’s needs and respond to them with what she said was, “very little ‘red tape.’”
Working with the homeless has helped Webster learn to “concentrate on serving the Lord one day at a time, and let him take care of tomorrow.”
“The condition of the homeless is really the condition of us all before God,” she said. “They do not know from one day to the next what they will have or even if they will survive. Neither do we know the day nor the hour.”
Such insight has helped developed Webster’s understanding of God’s call upon her life and the lives of her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
“Our task is simply to love in the moment, and be grateful in the moment. The rest belongs to Him.”
Lindsay Bunker
After seeing an ad for Christ in the City as she walked into the science building of Benedictine College in her native Kansas, 23-year-old Lindsay Bunker saw the program as the perfect opportunity.
Bunker had been thinking about doing mission work in the United States for the summer after she graduated, so she committed to the summer Christ in the City program, enjoying it so much that the year-long commitment was the natural transition for her.
“I loved the emphasis on forming my own mind and heart before being able to serve,” she said.
Serving as missionary and program coordinator for Christ in the City, her favorite part of the program is working with homeless youths.
Bunker’s goal with the youths is to help “reawaken their true desires which will bring them greater happiness and fulfillment.”
“I love talking to them,” she said, “and trying to help the kids to realize that their immediate desires point to something greater, to something that will fulfill them.”
Working with the youths has helped her understand the importance of family in a person’s development. Many of the teens are homeless because of broken homes, and they see the CIC missionaries as “the support and the love that they are lacking at home.”
As Bunker continues to be a part of CIC, she keeps learning more about her community and herself, as well as being thankful for her own family.
“Being a missionary with CIC has helped me to realize my own desires,” she said, “and how dependence on Christ is crucial to living my life intensely in the reality of his presence in my daily life.”
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