Students Travel on Mission to Texas

“It’s impossible for you to feel what happened last week,” Director of Campus Ministries Jamie Williams told the gathered audience at Fleet Fellowship on March 17. “But, I want to do my best to describe the impact that one of these trips has on us as believers.”

Less than a week prior to addressing the Erskine student body, Williams returned to campus with a group of students who spent their spring break on a mission trip to Laredo, Texas. Williams and Erskine staff members Izzy Yuskis and Tucker Curfman were joined by students Zane Brooks, Grace Roberts, Joy Williams, and Landon Ziegler. On March 6, the group departed Due West for Laredo—1,300 miles southwest of Erskine.

“There were eight of us in a 12-person van, which made for a lot of fun memories!” says Yuskis, Erskine’s resident director for honors housing. “We loved taking lots of stops at Buc-ee’s, blasting Dr. Jamie Williams’s high school era playlist (which we would lovingly call ‘oldies music’), and snacking on Bundt cakes. There were deep, heartfelt talks, attempts to learn Spanish with the help of one of our bilingual teammates, and lots of late-night laughter.”

After a long drive and an overnight stay in Baton Rouge, the team arrived in Laredo. The city sits astride the Rio Grande, along a bend in the river separating it from the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo. It struggles with an aging infrastructure and high poverty rates, and one of the group’s goals was to assist with a church plant in a north-central Laredo neighborhood.

“When we first got to the site where we were going to receive training from missionaries and meet the people we would be serving with, we were greeted by them as brothers and sisters in Christ,” Yuskis says.

Freshman biology major Grace Roberts also found a warm welcome awaiting the team in Laredo. “I was expecting to go up to people and approach them, but they would just come up to me and ask me how I was doing and how they could pray for me,” Roberts says.

The group undertook a range of ministry efforts that included leading public worship in parks, providing prepared meals and clothing for the area’s homeless and refugee populations, and participating in local block parties and festivals to share the gospel and personal testimonies. They also held a backyard vacation Bible school to introduce the new church plant’s location. The church, Iglesia Christiana Eben-Ezer, successfully opened on Easter in a city neighborhood just a mile east of the Rio Grande.

“I don’t have a best memory of the trip, because it was all amazing, but if I had to pick one it would be giving out popsicles to kids attending Laredo’s annual kite festival,” Yuskis says. “It was just fun to interact with all of the kids while their parents were ministered to by other people on our team.”

Roberts also found the kite festival to be one of the most memorable.

“I was stationed [at the festival] helping kids. It was really encouraging for me to see, even though a lot of them came from broken families, almost every kid I talked to knew Jesus and really wanted to know more about him and wanted to follow him,” Roberts says. Despite the poverty all around them, “they always saw the positive instead of focusing on their hardships.”

The team attended an authentic backyard Mexican cookout, and there was unanimous agreement among the group that it was one of the best meals they had ever eaten.

“Teaming up with current ministries in Laredo was a huge blessing, and working with the missionaries and the new church plant was very meaningful,” Williams says. “Our students actively sharing their testimonies and the gospel for the first time really opened their eyes to what living their lives for the gospel could and should look like when they return home.”

The group departed Laredo on March 12, stopping again in Baton Rouge overnight. The next morning, they began the final leg home to Due West.

Though some of the team members had not known each other well prior to the trip, “we certainly felt like old friends afterward,” Yuskis says. “While we were eager to leave the van at the end of the trip, we were not so fast to leave each other when it was time to return to Erskine.”

Roberts, who describes herself as not especially outgoing, would recommend a mission trip even to those who might have some initial trepidation.

“Everyone that you work with is easy to get along with, and they make sure you’re comfortable with where you are,” Roberts says. “I would encourage people to come because God will work through you, even if you don’t know what to say. You can show Christ’s love through your actions.”

At the March 17 Fleet Fellowship, Williams discussed plans for a fall break mission trip later this year. The destination will be Myrtle Beach to work with Impact Ministries, focusing on food pantries, clothes closets, and sports camps for children.

A spring break 2027 trip is planned to Clarkston, Georgia, near Atlanta, to work with refugees. The region has one of the largest per-capita refugee populations in the U.S., and Williams and his team will perform ministry in a variety of locations in the region.

Those interested in hearing more about future mission trips should contact Jamie at jamie.williams@erskine.edu