Tea Trinity Lutheran Church youth take faith and service to West Virginia coal country

In their largest mission trip yet, 41 youth group members from Tea Trinity Lutheran Church traveled from Tea to Belle, West Virgina, where students repaired homes, built relationships, and reflected on what it means to serve.

Andrew Tuohino has taken over the official role of Youth Coordinator, but he is not new to the work. 

“While I just graduated college, I have been working as the youth pastor for a full year. I was honored when they asked me to chaperone the youth group along with my pastor. Throughout that trip I could tell that I was being called to this and that the church knew it would be a good fit for me. Now, I am leading youth group each Wednesday and planning our mission trips we take each year,” Tuohino said.

Last year, the youth group traveled to Ashby, MN for their mission, and this year, Tea Trinity spread their wings by making the journey to Belle, a small community in West Virginia’s Upper Kanawha Valley. 

“The trip ran June 20 through June 28, with the group leaving Tea on Saturday, stopping in Westfield, Indiana, and then arriving in Belle on Sunday morning. They stayed until the following Saturday before returning home to Tea on Sunday, June 28,” he said.

The Trip was organized through Group Mission Trips, a national program that brings youth groups together for home repair work, worship, and community service. 

“Group Mission Trips trains groups of college students and employs them to watch over the groups that are coming in and completely run the camps. Not only do we have this trained crew, but there is an amazing group of volunteers that come in that are contractors, construction business owners, and people who truly know the industry and are able to help guide students and really show the kids the proper procedures that can turn out to be lifelong skills,” Tuohino said.

Through this mission, the group worked to help hang dry wall, completely tear down and rebuild porches, put in wheelchair ramps, siding and skirting on trailer homes, or siding on a house, repainting exterior and interior painting and other odds and ends jobs like cutting grass, replacing lightbulbs or other hard to reach things for the elderly.

For Tuohino, the partnership with Group Mission Trips, is familiar. Before becoming youth pastor, he had served as a missionary with Group Mission Trips. That background made the Belle trip feel like both a continuation of his own story and a new chapter for the Tea Trinity students he now leads. 

“In working with Group Mission Trip, I feel like I’m right at home having worked so closely with them over the years,” he said.

Belle and the surrounding Upper Kanawha Valley sit in a proud Appalachian region shaped by coal. Group Mission Trips notes that the area once thrived as a mining community, but many residents now live with serious housing needs after years of economic hardship and flooding. Broader reporting and research on West Virginia’s coalfields also point to the lasting effects of coal’s decline, including job losses and persistent poverty in communities that once depended on mining. 

“That was a major reason the group chose Belle. The students wanted to see the mountains, but they also wanted to serve in a place where the need was visible and real,

 Tuohino said. “There is a lot of poverty in that area because there are so many families who once worked in the coal mines and are now out of work,” he continued.

Some homes had not seen major repairs in decades, others belonged to elderly residents or families who needed help with basic safety and upkeep. 

“Through Group Mission Trips, crews arrived with assignments already prepared, materials coordinated and backup projects identified in case groups finished early,” Tuohino said.

The Tea Trinity group was part of a much larger effort. In all, 405 participants traveled to Belle, representing 26 churches from 15 states. Each night, the full group returned to Riverside High School, where they ate, slept, worshiped and learned to live side by side after long days on hot, sweaty work sites. 

“We have to learn to live and work side by side especially after going out to the worksite each day, getting sweaty and coming back and learning how to be graceful to one another and make the best of the situation,” he said.

The experience also stretched students socially. Rather than keeping church groups together, Group Mission Trips mixes students into crews with people they have not met. Tuohino said Tea Trinity’s 41 travelers were spread among 66 different crews, meaning most of his students spent their workdays alongside teenagers and adults from other states.

“The coolest part of the mission trip is being placed into groups with people you don’t know. They were all with random people from across the country that they got to meet,” he recalled.

Among the projects that stood out most to Tuohino was a wheelchair ramp built for an elderly man who had started and continued leading a small church in one of the hollows near Belle for more than 30 years. 

“There is a small church in there that a member of the community had been running for 30+ years, as an elderly man now, he requested that we come build a ramp for him. Hearing all the stories he had to tell us just stopped us all in our tracks. He started this church himself and has continued to run it through all the ups and downs the community has faced for the last 30 years. Being able to give back to someone like that is a once in a lifetime opportunity. He has helped probably everyone in that community and now was gracious enough to ask us for a hand. It’s something I’ll never forget,” Tuochino said.

Worship framed each day of the trip. The group gathered every morning and every night for prayer, singing, conversation and teaching. This year’s theme was “Illuminate,” a theme Tuohino said challenged students to think about how God shines light into them so they can reflect that light to others. 

“As a group we do worship every morning and every night. It’s very important to all of us. We pray, we sing, we talk together as a group. The theme of our trip this year is illuminate. Not only does God illuminate all of our sins and take care of them, but he also shines a light into us so that we can take that light and shine it into other people. We wanted the students to really focus on how every part of the day something is illuminated,” he said.

One analogy stayed with the group: just as the moon lights the night sky only because it reflects the sun, Christians reflect light that comes from God. For Tuohino, that message became visible as students met Belle residents and served them face to face. 

“It was really cool to see those lessons that we talked about hit the kids,” he said. 

“You could see their faces light up as they met community members of Belle and had the opportunity to shine their own lights,” he continued.

One evening activity involved group members being given a piece of paper and they had the opportunity to write down all of their sins that they had been holding close to their chests and hadn’t told any one about. 

“Within two days in, these kids were opening up. They were sharing parts of themselves with me and others in the group and giving amazing insight as to who they are becoming as people,” Tuohino said.

Group Mission Trips encourages leadership skills in each participant that enters the program. 

“Each kid in the crew has a job and their completion of the job determines the success of the day. Every day every member has to show up for themselves and the rest of the group. Each day had a theme and it was to expand the groups thinking skills,” he said.

Leadership values also include learning how to speak with other group members both in person and over the phone. 

“Group members got the opportunity to work on projects and they had a list of site coached who they could contact who were construction workers or contractors who kept the projects moving and could give them some quick but in depth training on exactly what they were working on. Kids gained the courage to call and say hey, I don’t know if we are doing this right, can you come over and check it out to make sure it’s right,” Tuohino said.

Tuohino said the program helps students understand that the world contains many viewpoints — even within one congregation. 

“The goal is to teach these members that there are a ton of different view points in the world, everyone has their own ideas, much like Bible verses that everyone has their own idea on what each verse means and they can read differently even by members of your own congregation,” he said.

Setting aside some time for fun is one way Tuohino has worked to bring his youth group closer together. 

“Part of the trip is making sure we set aside time together as a youth group to connect and build a stronger relationship together. One thing we chose to do was go to an inflatable water park together as a group. When we got there it was a huge lake that was filled with inflatables that the kids could just go wild on. It was all smiles and laughs and I really believe that laughing together is an important part of getting to know each other. It’s the ice breaker kids need to discover more about each other and these ones truly bonded out there,” Tuohino said.

What started as 405 strangers meeting ended in lifelong friendships and connections all across America. 

“The kids took the lessons and they made such intense friendships that you aren’t going to get anywhere other than through a commitment to God. We witnessed students from multiple groups coming together to kneel down at the cross and pray over each other and with each other. The connection these students made through their love of God is something they will carry with them as they return back to their own communities,” he said.