Holy Family Parish in Novi hosts 22 interns with Protect Life Michigan for three months of neighborhood outreach, conversations
NOVI — The halls of the Church of the Holy Family in Novi are usually quiet during the summer months, as parishioners and staff take vacations and enjoy a generally slower pace of life.
This summer, things are a little livelier.
Roxanne Hundsrucker, director of Christian Service for Holy Family, has been excited to have the presence of 22 young interns with Protect Life Michigan roaming the halls, classrooms, courtyard and adoration chapel and generally bringing new life to the parish for the last three months.
Holy Family has been hosting high school and college-age pro-life interns from across the state since May. Protect Life Michigan is an organization that upholds the value and protection of all human life and works for an end to abortion, primarily by training young adults to advocate for the unborn.
The parish serves as a home base for the interns, who otherwise spend their days engaging in pro-life street evangelization through sidewalk counseling, door-to-door canvassing, and engaging community members in personal, one-on-one conversations.
“It is a breath of fresh air to walk into the church and see young people, young adults,” Hundsrucker told Detroit Catholic. “They are a very, very faith-filled young group of young adults and high schoolers. They pray — we find them in the chapel, we see them in the church, they genuflect when they come into the building. It is pretty powerful, and everyone on staff has felt the same way that I do.”
While the organization has had intern programs in the past, this is the first full-time internship spanning from May 15 to Aug. 16 for college students and June 17 to Aug. 16 for high schoolers. The interns convene at Holy Family almost every day during the week, and the majority of them are housed in local rental homes.
Holy Family became available to the organization by chance when intern Florence Brighton met the parish’s communications director, Jim Fisher, at the Encounter School of Ministry.
“It really was a Holy Spirit moment,” Audrey Whipple, Protect Life Michigan’s internship coordinator, told Detroit Catholic. “It came out that she was looking for a space where Protect Life Michigan could be hosted for this internship for the summer, and pretty much on the spot (Fisher) offered a place at Holy Family."
The interns are all Catholic or Protestant, Whipple added, and they “feel at home” at the parish, which she calls their “home base.”
“Our home base is where we ground ourselves. We pray, we do all of our training; we do everything that we need to equip ourselves before we go out into the community,” Whipple said. “There is a lot of spiritual warfare in the pro-life movement and in defending the pro-life position, so Holy Family has been a place where we have been able to recenter ourselves and get the peace that we need.”
Whipple, who started as an intern with Protect Life Michigan when she was a student at Michigan State University, said the students have engaged in some form of outreach almost every day, primarily in Novi, but also around Metro Detroit and Ann Arbor. As of publication, Protect Life Michigan reports that the interns have reached “over 148,000 people with the pro-life message” and, due to their efforts, there are “3,665 fewer pro-choice people and 2,542 more pro-life people” in the Novi area.
Whipple explained the organization quantifies the number of people reached by those who have engaged with the pro-life message.
Whipple said images "are the best piece of evidence we have for the injustice of abortion," adding interns have employed what she called "the human rights argument" to change hearts and minds.
"We establish that both the pro-choice person and (pro-life people) believe in human rights for all human beings, and after laying out the science that abortion intentionally takes the life of an innocent human being, wouldn’t that make abortion a human rights violation?” Whipple explained.
“Sometimes they instantly agree with us on the spot, and it's a light bulb moment,” Whipple continued. “Sometimes it takes a lot more conversation and thought, but as long as we clearly lay out the pro-life position with them, that would be someone who is considered to be reached.”
Over the course of the summer, the interns have kept track of the number of people who have verbally confirmed that they have partially or totally changed their mind on abortion, Whipple said.
Brighton, the intern who helped make the connection between Holy Family Parish and Protect Life Michigan, said the interns have been amazed watching God work on the hearts and minds of those they encounter.
She recalled one particular encounter that stuck with her.
“This man was talking to a fellow intern for a whole hour, and the intern was using all the intellectual arguments, but nothing was breaking through to this man,” Brighton said. “He came to me, and I just talked to him, and I heard him, and I just asked him simple questions like, ‘What has your experience been with abortion?’ and ‘How has this affected you? Has anyone in your life been hurt by abortion?’ We just dove deep into his fears, and, in our conversation, he went from being 100 percent pro-choice to being 100 pro-life just because I was able to see him and see all of him.
“This summer has shown me how broken we all are, both myself and others,” Brighton added. “And two, the healing power of Jesus and how he sees all of us, and he wants us to feel complete and whole.”
Another intern, Rose Skrobola, 20, said the experience has shown her how one small thing can have a great impact.
“One of the interns was going door to door, and she talked to this guy who had previously received one of our pamphlets,” Skrobola said. “He (told her) he used to be pro-choice to a certain extent, and then he saw the literature that we dropped on his doorstep, and he changed his mind. It’s just really amazing to see the impact that small things, things you maybe wouldn’t imagine, would have such an effect.”
Whipple, 21, said her biggest takeaway is similar: never underestimate what God can do with a group of young people.
“Many of these students are 15-16 years old, changing dozens of minds individually this summer,” Whipple said. “I think that is something they didn’t realize they had the capacity to play a part in, but the more they have done it, the more they have realized how little it has to do with them and how much it has to do with God.”
Whipple said Holy Family’s hospitality made Protect Life Michigan’s first full-time internship program run smoothly, adding future internships are planned. Hundsrucker said Holy Family has already offered to host the interns for a second year, although they are likely to choose another part of town in order to reach more people.
“Now, in the last week of this internship, I see with every single one of (the interns) that their hearts are completely and utterly broken for the unborn in a way that it wasn’t before and in a way that is much more reflective of God’s heart for the unborn,” Whipple said. “It has been a beautiful thing to see, and I am inspired by them.”
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