Ava Boyden is a MODG senior who spent the summer of 2022 serving as a missionary at Catholic Youth Summer Camp in Centerburg, Ohio. CYSC is a summer camp that helps kids encounter the Lord through the sacraments, high adventure activities, and through the hearts of its amazing missionaries.

When did you begin to discern being a summer missionary?
“I started discerning at the beginning of my junior year.”

What was the process of application like for you?
“It wasn’t very stressful at all, which was good because I thought it would be. I applied and then there was an in-person interview… Everyone was super nice so applying was easy and really chill.”

What was it like transitioning from finishing Junior Year to immediately leaving for the summer?
“It was really stressful because usually I have school assignments that I finish in early June, but I had to be on campus at the beginning of June so I was really stressed out about getting all my school work done… I remember finishing up my last paper on the day I was leaving for the summer.”

What drew you to the specific mission of CYSC?
“Well, first of all I was a camper at CYSC. I think I just loved seeing how the mission changed the missionaries. Just seeing these missionaries pour out and give everything to God and the joy that they had struck me. I also loved the fact that they work with kids because kids have a lot of brokenness. We don’t see it as much because the brokenness of adults is more visible than kids, but kids also have wounds and brokenness. It was just the heart for the youth that CYSC had that I loved and I think it’s really beautiful.”

What was your role over the summer?
“So I was on service staff, which was the only staff I could join as a senior.”

What did you do on a day to day basis?

“Service Staff includes a lot of intercession and prayer and behind the scenes stuff. In the mornings we would get up and all pray together. Then half of us would go clean and half of us would stay and do breakfast with the campers. After that we would do some more cleaning and more praying and then do lunch. The afternoon would be pretty chill, we would either do some extra things that didn’t get done in the morning or we would just hang out. And then we had dinner. The evenings were just whatever they ended up being, they weren’t structured which was really fun cause every evening was different.”

What was the best part of your experience?
“Probably the community. On service staff you’re always with your other staff members so you really get to know them which was cool.”

What was the hardest aspect of being a summer missionary?
“When you’re on service staff you have so much time for prayer, and that’s when the Lord brings up a lot of things. He works so much internally with you which can be hard, but also is really beautiful and fruitful.”

Did this summer impact your life in any way? If so, how?
“It definitely impacted my life in a lot of ways. One of the biggest ways was it showed me what real community looks like. Another way was that my relationship with the Lord went from a kinda mediocre relationship to being the most important thing in my life.”

Would you recommend serving as a missionary in your highschool years?
“Yes. I would definitely recommend it. It changed a lot of things in my senior year. I look back at how I was living in my junior year and how I am living in my senior year and they are completely different. And also my discernment process for what I’m doing after High School looks a lot different just because of how much I changed –for the good– during the summer. So yes, it’s very good and beneficial. “

Do you have any tips for people discerning mission work over the summer?
“Mission can be scary sometimes, because you’re definitely stripping away a lot of material things and not living the same lifestyle you are at home. It can be scary but the Lord chooses to work in that timing, so just open up and surrender and see what He has to say. If you’re open He will do things you could never imagine. I experienced that, I was like, “Ok Lord, let’s do this” and then I did it and it was totally one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life. So yeah, I would say the biggest thing is to just be open and surrender and be willing to follow Him step by step.”