Holy Family Parish in Novi hosts 22 Protect Life Michigan interns for three months of community outreach and community outreach

NEW — The halls of Holy Family Church in Novi are typically quiet during the summer months as parishioners and staff vacation and enjoy a generally slower pace of life.

Things are a little livelier this summer.

Roxanne Hundsrucker, director of Holy Family Christian Ministry, is pleased with the presence of 22 young interns from Protect Life Michigan who have been roaming the halls, classrooms, courtyard and adoration chapel for the past three months, generally bringing new life to the parish.

Holy Family has been hosting high school and college-aged 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 to end abortion, primarily by training young adults to advocate for the unborn.

The church serves as a home base for the interns, who otherwise spend their days doing street evangelism for the pro-life movement, such as through sidewalk counseling, door-to-door canvassing, and personal one-on-one conversations with church members.

“It’s like a refreshing breeze to go to church and see young people and young adults,” Hundsrucker said. Catholic Church in Detroit. “They’re a very, very devout group of young adults and high school students. They pray – we find them in the chapel, we see them in the church, they kneel when they enter the building. It’s pretty powerful, and everyone on the staff felt the same way I did.”

Although the organization has offered internship programs in the past, this is the first full-time internship, which runs from May 15 to August 16 for college students and June 17 to August 16 for high school students. Interns meet at Holy Family nearly every day during the week, and most of them are housed in rental apartments on site.

Holy Family was introduced to the organization by chance when Encounter School of Ministry intern Florence Brighton met the parish’s communications director, Jim Fisher.

“It was truly a moment of the Holy Spirit,” said Audrey Whipple, internship coordinator at Protect Life Michigan Catholic Church in Detroit“It turned out that she was looking for a place where Protect Life Michigan could accommodate this summer internship, and (Fisher) offered her a spot at Holy Family practically on the spot.”

The interns are all Catholic or Protestant, Whipple added, and they “feel at home” in the church community, which she calls her “home base.”

“Our home base is where we ground ourselves. We pray, we do all our training; we do whatever we need to equip ourselves before we go out into the community,” Whipple said. “There is a lot of spiritual struggle in the pro-life movement and in defending the pro-life position, so Holy Family was a place where we could reorient ourselves and find the peace that we need.”

Whipple, who began as an intern with Protect Life Michigan while she was still a student at Michigan State University, said the students have engaged in some form of outreach nearly every day, mostly in Novi but also in 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 that there are “3,665 fewer pro-life advocates and 2,542 more pro-life supporters” in the Novi area because of their efforts.

Whipple explained that the organization quantifies the number of people reached by those who engage with the pro-life message.

Whipple said images were “the best evidence we have of the injustice of abortion,” adding that interns used what she called “the human rights argument” to change hearts and minds.

“We find that both pro-life and pro-life advocates believe in the human rights of all people. And after presenting the scientific evidence that abortion intentionally takes the life of an innocent human being, wouldn’t abortion be a human rights violation?” Whipple explained.

“Sometimes they agree with us right away and then it’s a lightbulb moment for us,” Whipple continued. “Sometimes it takes a lot more conversation and thought, but as long as we make our pro-life position clear to them, that’s considered accomplished.”

Over the summer, interns tracked the number of people who verbally confirmed that they had partially or completely changed their minds about abortion, Whipple said.

Brighton, the intern who helped make the connection between Holy Family Parish and Protect Life Michigan, said the interns were amazed to see God working on the hearts and minds of the people they met.

She remembered a special encounter that stayed with her.

“This man talked to another intern for an entire hour, and the intern made all kinds of intellectual arguments, but nothing was getting through to this man,” Brighton said. “He came to me, and I just talked to him, listened to him, and asked him simple questions like, ‘What have your experiences been with abortion?’ and ‘How has it affected you? Has anyone in your life suffered because of abortion?’ We dove deep into his fears, and in our conversation, his opinion went from 100 percent pro-abortion to 100 percent pro-life, just because I could see him and see him completely.

“This summer has shown me how broken we all are, both myself and others,” Brighton added. “And secondly, the healing power of Jesus and how he sees all of us and he wants us to feel complete and whole.”

Another intern, 20-year-old Rose Skrobola, said the experience showed her how a small thing can have a big impact.

“One of the interns went door to door and talked to a man who had previously received one of our brochures,” Skrobola said. “He (told her) that he used to be pro-choice to some extent, and then he saw the brochure we left on his doorstep and changed his mind. It’s just incredible to see the impact that little things can have, things that you might not imagine.”

Whipple, 21, said her most important lesson was similar: never underestimate what God can do with a group of young people.

“Many of these students are 15 to 16 years old, and they’ve changed dozens of people’s minds this summer,” Whipple said. “I don’t think they knew they were capable of doing it, but the more they’ve done it, the more they’ve realized how little it has to do with them and how much it has to do with God.”

Whipple said Protect Life Michigan’s first full-time internship program went smoothly thanks to Holy Family’s hospitality, adding that more internships are planned. Hundsrucker said Holy Family has already offered to host the interns for a second year, though they will likely choose a different part of town to reach more people.

“Now, in the last week of this internship, I see each and every one of them (the interns) whose hearts are completely broken for the unborn in a way that wasn’t there before and that is much more reflective of God’s heart for the unborn,” Whipple said. “It’s been beautiful to see and they inspire me.”