We make our plans, but God guides our paths

A YASC reflection by Henry M. Bibelheimer (Oklahoma)

My name is Henry Bibelheimer and I served as a Young Adult Service Corps (YASC) volunteer in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines from 2018 to 2020. When each new YASC application season begins, I think about where I was in the fall of 2017. I had started my last semester of life as an undergrad and I was working on finishing my application for YASC. I was feeling a weird mix of emotions: I was really excited to be done with college, but also worried that I would be leaving the comfort of knowing what my immediate future held.

I was facing the daunting question of what to do after college. I knew that graduate school would be part of my future, but I didn’t know what kind of career I was actually interested in, which made applying to graduate school difficult. I really liked my undergraduate degree program, and I knew that whatever I did, my end goal was to not get distracted by money, but to find a job I would enjoy. With more questions than answers, I started to look for another option for my immediate future.

I had heard about YASC and thought it would be interesting to explore, so I applied. After submitting my YASC application, I was invited to join the discernment retreat and I reached out to Kate Jewett-Williams, who I knew as a former counselor at St. Crispsin’s Episcopal Camp in Oklahoma. At that time, Kate was serving as a YASCer in Liverpool, England. Kate said the reason YASC stood out for her was because of the discernment retreat where the staff put all of their effort into matching each applicant with a placement that plays to their strengths. Kate suggested that I go to discernment (it’s all paid for, so I had nothing to lose) and then decide if this was the program for me.

I went to the discernment retreat and had an amazing time. It was my first time ever being in a monastery [the discernment retreat is held at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY] and getting to stay there with the monks was an incredible experience in itself. I left discernment knowing that this was what I wanted to do for the next year of my life, but I didn’t know what it would look like. If you move forward with the program, you say yes to the program itself and not a specific placement.

Talk about a leap of faith!

YASC has a large variety of different programs all around the world, but one that I was most excited about – and prayed to get matched with – was a community development program in the Philippines called E-CARE. Thankfully, the YASC team felt that my interests, gifts, and skills were a good match for working with E-CARE, and I was assigned to work with that ministry in the Diocese of the Northern Philippines.

Working with E-CARE and being part of the amazing community in Bontoc – and the wider Episcopal Church in the Philippines – was an incredibly life-changing experience. The staff taught teach me so much about the local culture and the power of empowering people to help themselves. I found something that I became extremely passionate about and, even though I wasn’t sure what the future would hold for me when I finished my time with YASC, I had no doubt that I was exactly where God had called me to be.

The passion for sustainability that began when I was a YASCer in the Philippines – where I was introduced to Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) – has become a guiding force in my life. While I was still in the Philippines, I began looking into a master’s program in sustainable development, which I pursued after I returned home. Because of my experience in the Philippines, I was able to approach the discussions in my graduate classes differently. Having lived and learned within the indigenous community in the Mountain Province of the Philippines, my understandings and perspectives were imbued with a deep respect for indigenous culture and wisdom and gave me an interesting perspective to share alongside my own ideas.

Today, I work for the city of Broken Arrow as a city planner, and I have started a business in sustainable development. As I look forward to growing it, I will continue to build upon the knowledge that I began developing while living in the Philippines. I have already returned to see my friends and former colleagues in the Philippines, and I know that I have their prayers and support in all that I do here in Oklahoma. The relationships I built are for life.

Thanks to my experience with YASC, I have grown in so many ways. I’m sure there are some that I can’t even see yet. One lesson that stayed with me throughout my time in the Philippines and that I carry to this day is “we make our plans, but God guides our paths.”

If you are in a position where you are discerning whether YASC is right for you, I will give you the same advice my friend Kate gave me: go ahead and apply. If you’re invited, accept the invitation to the discernment retreat. Then you can enjoy a long weekend in a monastery in New York with a group of people all asking the same questions and staff who are there to walk with you. Then you can decide if you feel called to say yes to YASC.