My BYM Experience: "Follow Me"
8/19/2026
Henry Brumfield | Class of 2027
As I sit down to write this reflection, it’s been roughly one month since my Belen Youth Missions (BYM) trip to La Cuchilla ended. BYM brought 60 students to the Dominican Republic, where we spent 8 days working diligently to finish a roughly 7.4-mile-long aqueduct for a village of hundreds of people. Each morning we woke up at 7:00 a.m. sharp and headed to breakfast. After breakfast, we hopped into the backs of white pickup trucks and drove through the mountains of the D.R. We worked until 4:30 p.m., doing things like digging, laying pipe, and covering the pipe for the aqueduct we were building. It wasn't easy, but knowing how important the aqueduct was for people of the village kept us going.
The reason I waited nearly one month to begin this reflection is that I didn’t want to write while I was still feeling that high that so many people experience after a retreat. I wanted to wait and see how this trip actually affected and impacted my life when I was home. I wanted to see what remained after the excitement of such an impactful trip faded. I can now say that out of everything I experienced on BYM, one event changed the way I will live and carry myself.
At one of the daily Masses, after receiving the Eucharist and while I was kneeling in prayer, I was getting anxious and trying to think of the right words to say to God. I would think of something to say, get ready to say it, hesitate, and then tell myself, “that can be worded better”, or “that makes no sense”. It was during this time that a piece of advice I received from one of the chaperones kept going through my head.
In conversation with him, he brought up that there is no such thing as a perfect prayer and, if you can’t think of anything to say, sit in silence and let God do the talking. At the moment, I thought it was a little strange and unorthodox to let God speak to me, but I decided to take his advice. I sat in silence with my eyes closed and my mind clear and I heard nothing. Roughly 1 to 2 minutes after closing my eyes, I opened them, frustrated that nothing had happened.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s hard to describe, but I couldn’t stop looking at it and I didn’t know why. I then felt Jesus telling me, “stop with the sin and garbage of this world and follow me.” Immediately after Mass, I went to Fr. Willie, S.J. and asked him to interpret the statue. He told me that he sees Jesus holding his hand down to the world. He then asked me: “What do you see?” I told him I saw Jesus holding his hand out for me to grab. Fr. Willie then suggested I hold onto that message and not forget it.
Initially, I thought what God meant by “garbage” was things like money and pleasure.
Now, as I look back, I realize what He truly meant was to stop caring about what people thought of me and let go of the pressure to live up to other people’s expectations. When I thought about my future before this trip, I limited my thinking to what people thought I should do with my life. Things like becoming a lawyer or climbing the corporate ladder. It is only after this trip that I realized I must change my perspective on my future and focus more on asking myself where and how I can best serve others and follow God's plan. BYM gave me a real-life example of that. Looking back now, I can say for sure that it taught me that service is not about ourselves, but for others. I can now say God is telling me that the fulfilling life I strive for won't come from what I do for myself, but from how I serve others.
Since this trip, I’ve been a lot more comfortable with who I am and less worried about people’s opinions on who I should be. I’ve also noticed that, when I face difficult situations, I don’t worry about what other people will think of how I react, but instead focus on letting go of that “garbage” and listening to the words of Jesus saying, “Follow me.”
The Belen Youth Missions is for rising seniors and has been serving people in impoverished areas of the Dominican Republic for over 40 years. Registration information is sent via email to the junior class in mid-January. For more information, click here. The photo album for BYM 2026 is available here.