C.P. resident’s eyes opened by
11-month world travels
BY MARISA KWIATKOWSKI
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219.662.5333 | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 | 6 comment(s)
It took 11 months and 12 countries for the 23-year-old Crown Point resident’s eyes to open to a world beyond her middle-class American upbringing.
McKenna called the rigorous trip “a personal wake-up call.”
“You see starvation, you see rape, things that will slap you in the face,” she said. “You learn to silence yourself, your desire and sense of entitlement.”
McKenna said she joined nearly 50 other people from across the United States to travel most of 2007 in The World Race, a mission-based trip dedicated to personal and spiritual growth, and outreach.
During her travels, McKenna said she fed the poor, worked with local churches and orphanages, taught English and brought prostitutes out of the sex trade in Thailand.
She said it was six months before she broke down emotionally.
“I struggled a lot,” McKenna said. “It’s heart wrenching. You can go play with (orphans), feed them, then you send them back.”
She said she lived off $7 a day in some of the world’s poorest countries. They traveled to Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, Swaziland, Thailand, Cambodia, China and others.
McKenna returned to Crown Point in November and said she will continue her mission work.
“When you see what I see and know what I know, you can’t go back,” she said. “The little faces burned in my heart need someone to fight for them.”
McKenna said she will not fight alone.
During the World Race, she met her now-fiance Chad Mast, 28, of San Diego.
Mast was a team leader for The World Race and said he and McKenna developed a friendship during the trip that evolved into more when they got home. They were engaged at Christmas.
