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Sarah Nuernberger

Welcome Home, Sarah

Lent is a time for coming to ourselves, of realizing the distance we have put between ourselves and God. …Coming to ourselves prepares us to return home, regardless of how home is under-stood. — Henri Nouwen

Welcome Home, Sarah

Nine-year-old Sarah could not be consoled. She stood on the small deck of Cherry cabin at Camp Shalom, tears rolling down her cheeks. While her third-grade cabin-mates played, Sarah absently twirled her blond hair around her finger, longing for the security of home. She cried morning, noon, and night. She wanted, desperately, to return home.

“If there was a gold, silver, or bronze medal for homesickness, it would have been mine,” laughs 21-year-old Sarah Nuernberger today. “I cried for the first five years of Camp Shalom. Every year, I cried a little less. I worked my way down from 24 hours a day to just meals and nights.”

Pastor Eric Elkin, Camp Shalom’s executive director, now calls Sarah the “poster child” for camp homesickness. “We threatened to keep her here,” he laughs, “and now she won’t leave.” This summer, Sarah will be back to serve on the camp staff.

Fast forward. Leave-taking has become Sarah’s strong suit. A soon-to-be graduate of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, she says hello and goodbye with ease. By the age of 20, with trips to Africa, Sarah had set foot in all seven continents.

In high school, Antarctica became her fifth continent. In the vastness of snow and icebergs, she learned “how small and insignificant people are and how untouched and pristine parts of the world are. I found this sense of awe and humility, that there’s something so much bigger and more powerful than I am.”

And it was “here that I got my sense of adventure, sliding down glaciers with penguins, on my life jacket.”

Two years ago, Sarah’s destination was India. “I was overwhelmed by the number of impoverished people,” she remembers. “I saw India with a college group from inside a fish tank, a bus that had ‘tourist’ in large letters plastered on it.” India left her feeling lost and disconnected from people in need.

That disconnect propelled Sarah into deep connections: a one-month internship, serving an orphanage in an ancient Russian town; then on to Tanzania, East Africa, with a St. Paul friendship group; and ultimately to a semester of study in Uganda — all in the same year.

Always up for adventure, anywhere in the world, Sarah took an Iowa job in Summer 2009. Employed by AmeriCorps, without an ounce of construction knowhow, Sarah took charge of volunteer groups mucking and gutting flood-damaged houses in Cedar Rapids. She built up her serving muscles with sledge hammer and crowbar.

But this is not a story about a college student who has been privileged to travel the world. It is about a young woman leaving home and coming to understand herself. The brightness and sadness of the world have opened her eyes.

Now, she says simply, “I want to do something. I want to go somewhere that has a need.” Sarah senses that she should add a few more tools to her toolbox. So this fall she’ll enter the University of Denver, where she’ll study for a master’s degree in international development.

Perhaps Sarah will take her passion for problem-solving back to Uganda. There in that conflict-torn country, she witnessed “crazy amazing programs” that equip “child-mothers” with sustainable living skills. Kidnapped and raped by rebels, the girls are bringing their children back to their home communities where they are banned as “unclean.” Programs teach them that a skill in baking, for instance, can be parlayed into a bakery and income.

“I’ve met some amazing people in unfortunate circumstances,” says Sarah, “And I don’t think you can come back and not feel obligated to do something.” She knows not what. But she turns her face to the world with trust and good courage.

“I’m fortunate to have grown up here in a loving family in a loving community that has instilled in me the values of needing to help people.” This summer, Sarah will travel as far as Maquoketa to connect with a community of serving. “Camp Shalom is full of wonderful inspiring people who are making a difference in campers’ lives.”

The little homesick girl has grown up. Leaving home has been a spiritual quest for a young woman who says that “faith is rooted in how you act toward others.” She has journeyed to every continent. She has found her very self, along with a passion for serving. She carries with her a sense of belonging and home.

Says Sarah, “You never really leave a place you love. Part of that place shapes you when you leave.”

Welcome home, Sarah.

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"Who needs special effects when life itself is the most extraordinary special effect imaginable?" ~Michael Phillips, film critic, Chicago Tribune