Odden finds his missions

Gregory Odden (left) and Alex Muchinsky, a member of the Back Country mission, repel off the face of a granite wall in North Carolina. Photos courtesy of Gregory Odden

Odden (right) joins Alfredo Castillo Licea, the pastor of the church that the mission group worked with in Reynosa, Mexico. The homes built by Odden’s group were for the parishioners of the church.

Odden’s Back Country Ministry group hikes to the face of Green Mountain in North Carolina in June.

Colleen Badtke (facing camera) joins the rest of her mission group in building the wall of a house in Reynosa, Mexico.

The bugs were brutal, but, still, it was more comfortable on the roof.

At least on the top of the dormitory building, there was a breeze to push around the sweltering heat of July 2005 in Reynosa, Mexico. And for Gregory Odden, that was enough to let him sleep before another day of building homes with 6-inch concrete blocks and hand-mixed concrete poured on flat ground in the dump from which the community had sprung.

Odden, a 48-year-old project manager for Scherrer Construction Co. Inc., Burlington, was in Mexico with another chaperone and nine volunteers, aged 15 to 19, as part of the Son Servants ministry within the Presbyterians for Renewal Youth Ministry. It was Odden’s second mission trip through his Lake Geneva church, Chapel on the Hill.

“We spent a week there building homes because most of the people live in squalor,” he said. “Enterprising people would find poor people, and, for a few pesos, say they could get them up to the border so they could cross into the United States for good work. These people would get to Reynosa and realize it was a dead-end road.

“A month before we got there, the U.S. Embassy sent out a warning advising people not to cross the border.”

But Odden’s mission group went anyway, just as his group in 2004 went to Denver with another chaperone and a group of eight volunteers, aged 15 to 19. That was the first trip after Odden’s church decided to find a way to get parish kids more involved in the world, he said.

“What I found out was Denver has one of the highest percentages of homeless people in the United States,” Odden said. “We worked for a week in different food kitchens.”

Odden didn’t have to go on either trip, but he chose to do it because, he said, he wanted to work with kids and help them grow.

“It’s great to see the lights come on sometimes,” he said. “If we can’t help our weakest, then it’s kind of a poor reflection on us.”

But showing kids how to help themselves is just as important, which is why Odden this year joined another chaperone and eight kids, aged 11 to 15, on a trip to North Carolina and a hike in the Appalachian Mountains from June 9 to June 16.

The group hit the trail for five days, carrying with them everything they needed to survive.

“These experiences are great,” he said, “but my ultimate goal is that the seeds of wisdom take root, and they become the people they can be.”

— Chris Thompson