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My Inner-City Outreach experience has been a saga of things not going how I planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all started sophomore year when I was a part of the ICO Tucson, Ariz. team. I participated in all the prep for the trip, paid for my airplane tickets and even made it to the night before we flew out of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was only one problem. I was sick. I tried to convince myself by going to all my classes earlier that day that I was well enough for the trip, but through the entire day, I had no peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything felt wrong as I was sitting playing games with my team. I didn\u2019t hear God\u2019s voice, but I had an unexplainable feeling that God wanted me to go home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was livid. Why would God want me to leave a mission trip \u2013 a time dedicated to serving him? Why would I come this far to have to go home and sit around all of spring break?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was so frustrated with God and wanted to understand why this was his plan for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first thing I learned through that disappointment was that I needed to discover how to rest. The spring semester of my sophomore year was the most overcommitted I had ever been, and it led to terrible burnout at the end of the semester. Without going home, I know I would have suffered from much worse burnout than what I endured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took a year, but during my junior year I got to see more of why God took me away from ICO Arizona. I wanted to give ICO trips another shot, but I was scared to commit to the entirety of spring break. That was when I heard about ICO Philadelphia. The trip to Philly was only half of the break, which meant I could still rest for five days. I joined the team and grew to love everyone through our weekly meetings and prayer groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was an incredible blessing to be part of a group of students whom I wouldn\u2019t normally interact with and to be able to encourage each other through the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trip itself was such a fun and uplifting week. It was full of fun road-tripping, service, Wawa runs, worship and even a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ICO Philly partners with The Philadelphia Project, which is a nonprofit organization that partners with local churches, nonprofits and homeowners to build a better Philadelphia. Our stay at the Philly Project was incredible, and I fell in love with the organization and the people there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day during our service, a pastor of a local church, Pastor Mark, told me I have, \u201cthe face of a missionary,\u201d and for some reason that has stuck with me ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost every day of our trip, the service trip manager, Courtney Zellers, was sharing details of the summer internship program at The Philly Project. I was looking for internships at that time but making no progress in my other applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It felt like God was nudging me again. Before spring break was over, I had applied for an internship, and I interviewed the Monday that classes started back up. I landed an internship with them less than a week later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This summer I spent 12 weeks in Philadelphia as The Philadelphia Project\u2019s media intern. This experience produced so much growth in my faith, my profession and my relationships with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was constantly looking back to my sophomore year and thanking God that I did not go on my first ICO trip. If I had, I would have never spent my summer with an unbelievable group of people, making a difference in Philly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am planning to go on two ICO trips during my senior year: ICO Aliquippa over fall break and ICO Philadelphia over spring break. Over the years of serving on short-term mission trips, I have fallen in love with them and look for opportunities whenever I can get them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My love for ministry, and Pastor Mark\u2019s \u201cface of a missionary\u201d remark, have made me seriously consider missionary work after I graduate. I genuinely have no idea what I will be doing a year from now, but I will say with confidence, \u201cHere I am, Lord, send me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had my ICO journey mapped out. God had different ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[215],"tags":[144,34,29],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions","tag-mary-golias","tag-issue-2025-10-10","tag-perspectives"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",674,488,false],"thumbnail":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",150,109,false],"medium":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",300,217,false],"medium_large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",674,488,false],"large":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",674,488,false],"1536x1536":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",674,488,false],"2048x2048":["\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/09\/2025-10-10-24-a-surprising-blessing-1-v2.jpg",674,488,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Ian Schartner","author_link":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/author\/schartnerij23\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"I had my ICO journey mapped out. God had different ideas.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2214,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/2214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuorgs2.gcc.edu\/thecollegian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}