By: Alexis Boyd ’16
Emily Chapman, junior at Warren Woods Tower took a life changing trip to El Salvador. Emily didn’t go to El Salvador for vacation, or family, she went on a missions trip to help those in need. “I went with a team of 20 people from my youth group,”
While in El Salvador, Emily got a chance to explore different types of food. “The grosses food was plantain they are kind of like bananas. They look like them but don’t tastes like them. They are so gross.”
While Emily was there they mostly ate chicken and rice, and occasionally steak. “The exotic food I really liked was pupusa. They are handmade corn tortillas with filling with ground meat, cheese, and beans.” “This little boy came up and asked if we had pupusa’s in Michigan and when I said no he had like the saddest face.”
Emily did multiple exciting things while she was there. “My family has been sponsoring a little boy there for 5 years and I got to meet him.” Her team built 3 houses for 3 different families and communities in El Salvador. Also, Emily got to meet the kids in the youth group from the church she visited and go on a retreat with them. “Oh and we went zip lining through the jungle with the youth group. I can’t believe I almost forgot about that it was one of the best parts.”
Even though zip lining was fun, Emily said her favorite part was building the houses and getting to know the families. “It was great to see how grateful they were for what we were doing for them”.
Emily got a chance to meet numerous new people. She meet the pastor from the church she went to and his family, her sponsored child and his family, the international mission trip conductor, a team of eight translators, and multiple people from the church.
This trip was life changing for Emily. “The main thing was the amount of poverty. The size of their houses are like the size of my bedroom with dirt floors, and they shared a bed” She said that even though they all had so little they were filled with such joy. “I would see a little kid and smile at them and they would instantly smile back, but kids here don’t do that. It was just so crazy.”
At times when Emily didn’t have an interpreter around her, she had to use a lot of hand motions. “It was definitely frustrating at times not knowing what people were saying.”
Emily spent most her time in El Salvador, but at the end of the week her team went to a resort on the Pacific Ocean and had two days to their selves. “There were palm trees everywhere, and it was just so nice.”
Emily’s trip to El Salvador was really expensive. To pay for her trip she had two major fundraisers. One was a wild game dinner at her church where she donated things to be auctioned and served as a waitress. The other fundraiser she had was a church wide garage sale. All together she raised about 600 dollars.
Emily wants to travel to other places too. “I want to travel to Australia and different countries in Europe like Italy, and France, and Poland, and the Netherlands.” She too would love to go back to El Salvador. If she got the chance to go back she would be so happy. “I would go back in a heartbeat!”
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