ICO teams hit the road over break
By Anastasia Brown · Community Editor
What are your plans for spring break? Odds are, you or someone you know is hitting the road as a member of an ICO trip.
Inter-Community Outreach trips started at Grove City College in 1989 with the first trip to Ashland, Ky. To spend spring break supporting local ministries with whatever projects were needed. Since then, the program has grown and expanded globally, and this spring break, 13 teams will be heading out.
Some trips are close to home — the Center for Rural Ministry (CRM) will be sponsoring three groups to serve the local communities of New Castle, Pa., Meadville, Pa. and Cadiz, Ohio, and other teams are hitting Aliquippa, Pa. and Philadelphia, Pa. Some road trip teams will be headed to Atlanta, Ga., Buffalo, N.Y., Ashland, Ky., Tucson, Ariz., Chattanooga, Tenn. and Lexington, Ky. Two trips will require a passport and an international flight — San Andrés Sajcabajá, a municipality in Guatemala, and Klaipeda, Lithuania.
No matter the location, ICO teams and leaders share the same heart — to join alongside a unique community and find intentional ways to serve the local churches or ministries. This often means leading worship during services, painting or remodeling in ministry buildings, helping with youth programs and, most importantly, learning from the leaders and community members about service and the kingdom of God around the world.
The practical, day-by-day schedules of the groups are as varied as their communities.
“Serving alongside various ministry partners, Inter-Community Outreach (ICO) teams have served at food pantries, homeless shelters and clothing donation shops, worked on construction projects, assisted with youth ministry, led Bible studies and worship services, as well as brought encouragement and support to pastors and local church congregations. Each ICO trip is initiated by students and is student-led,” according to the college’s team service trips page.
The local CRM trips will be serving in rural contexts where the community must be intentionally fostered in unique ways. That can mean a ton of creativity on the parts of pastors and church members — senior Nevada Pacifico, who is co-leading the new Cadiz, Ohio team and who has participated in CRM trips for the past three years, described the open-mindedness she was intentional to maintain each year.
“There are so many needs in rural areas … these smaller congregations are either looking for new ways to bring people in, or they need something new, and they don’t have the resources to build it. If we’re able to build that relationship with them and the college, which has so much to offer, we can hopefully make it a place where trips return for many years. It’s really special that we get to start this,” Pacifico said.
Trips further afield — like the Guatemala team, which works with the Hogar de Vida in San Andrés Sajcabajá, a ministry that “gives safety, stability and love to children who have faced neglect or abuse in the largely Quiché-speaking region of central Guatemala,” according to the college’s alumni ICO page — are hoping to be the same type of steady resource. Sophomore Elizabeth Anzenberger, who is co-leading the Guatemala team, related that the trip has been such a confirmation of God’s eternal plan for her life. She had hoped to serve in a children’s home in Guatemala during her gap year, but the door had been unexpectedly shut. Now, two years later, she recognizes that her opportunity to grow in her faith since that door was closed has better prepared her for this moment. Having the door re-open now through the ICO trip has encouraged her faith and trust in God’s vision for her life.
And that is the twofold strength of the ICO program. Students can tangibly serve local communities in a variety of contexts, but they are simultaneously being built up in faith as they learn from the leaders and ministries they are serving. All the ICO trips would appreciate prayers — for their teams as well as for the communities they are seeking to serve — as they set out next week.
