We’ve been coming to St. Thomas since the beginning, way back in 2005 even before we actually moved to the Framingham location. It was a different experience for me; while my parents were happy to go to a Malayalam church again, I was a little confused at first because I didn’t really understand what was going on. As I grew older though, I became quite grateful that we made that decision because of how integral it was to me growing up.

Like everyone who grew up in the church I feel like being part of the community was special in the sense that it restructured our lives. The routine of going to CCD and church on Sundays in an environment of people of our own background was amazing. It was kind of inevitable in that sense that we would form friendships and bonds that have lasted the past sixteen years. Prayer meetings every month, St. Thomas’ feast every summer, and the way our church prided itself in traditions and community were something my family came to appreciate as a matter of ritual. Over time, skipping these traditions would have felt unspeakably strange, they became that important to our lives. To be honest I feel like this can often be one of the main things that makes people love our community, our sense of importance not only in keeping traditions alive but supporting and creating new ones as we go.

Being in college, I feel that my CCD education mostly helped in the sense that I try to think more ethically about situations going into them. One of the main focuses of our CCD program as we got older was how to apply what we had learned to situations we would face later in life. This part of our CCD education was continued in programs like WOH and Youth Retreats as well. That meant that when it came to making the right choices and learning from my mistakes when I came to college, I had a good foundation. And this actually really helped because a lot of the friends I made shared those same values as me and so we had a lot in common. In fact, one of my best friends in college is someone I met through our CCD program who left years ago. Safe to say, that this basis of morality is part of what helped me to meet amazing people and make better choices as I got older.

I think the main change I’ve seen since getting older is that the community has just become more diverse. When we were kids there weren’t too many people in the CCD program, and now there are so many kids here. Not only that, but our family unit and community as a whole has grown more than I would have imagined. That being said, I feel like a lot of us who were there from the beginning have graduated or moved on and aren’t around as much, and that has certainly changed the community. Many of us kids in the generation who went to WOH and YNIA are starting the rest of our lives, and I think seeing that many kids leave the program with the lessons that we gained over the years and actually make it in the world has left a lasting impact of sorts on the community. When younger kids start mostly hearing about what we’re up to from our parents and we’re not as present at the community, it’s a reminder that the continuation of our community is dependent upon us either coming back or passing on traditions to the next generation so that they continue on the foundations we built. Things like the youth choir and other programs which have outlasted our time as CCD students at church are a testament to how our community successfully has continued these traditions, because these things were never there at the start, and yet the generations of kids who have helped bring these things into reality have now made them a normal part of the lives of those who came after. Because of this, I believe that the lasting impact of the youth who graduated has changed our church environment for the better.

To me, those most precious memories were certainly the times when we spent learning and growing together. Whether it was the long hours spent planning for bible month, the youth retreats, or the times we went to go help people in soup kitchens or children’s programs, that sense of building each other up as we grew up characterizes that which was most precious to me about getting to be here. It is what makes me a proud member of our community, the fact that we learned how to grow as people together and share in those lessons in everything that we did.