Photo provided Grace Flint, left, and Kayla Casaletto are shown working for Mercy Ships.
A Columbus graduate is teaching and coaching missionary kids — and not just at a regular school, but aboard a boat.
Grace Flint, a Columbus Christian School graduate, is working aboard a vessel from Mercy Ships. The missions organization deploys hospital ships full of volunteer medical professionals to provide “life-changing surgeries to children and adults who otherwise would go without.”
Flint’s college friend and cross-country teammate Kayla Casaletto, a Goshen native, also teaches aboard the same ship, and the two women have started a running club for students. Both women graduated from Cedarville University in 2019 and have signed two-year contracts with Mercy Ships that will be up in June of 2023.
Flint teaches core subjects such as math, language arts, spelling, penmanship, history and science. She graduated from Cedarville with a degree in early childhood education, and her first job after college was at New Song Mission, a children’s home in Freetown, Ind.
However, she had always felt a call to overseas missions.
“I started praying and asking God where I should go,” recalled Flint. “And then one day, the Lord put Mercy Ships in my mind out of nowhere. I hadn’t thought about it for years. I had heard about it first from my dad because growing up in a Navy family, I was always around ships.”
A new ship had just been built, and the organization was seeking teachers for children whose parents worked aboard the vessel. There was an opportunity for Flint to teach second grade, and she accepted.
When Casaletto heard about Flint joining Mercy Ships, she was conflicted about whether to continue coaching cross-country and track at Goshen College or join her friend as a teacher aboard the ship.
“Again, with the timing of the Lord, the doors closed on the coaching opportunity, so Casaletto joined Flint on the ship,” said Cedarville officials. Casaletto teaches subjects such as physical education, life skills, the Bible and student life.
For families living aboard the ship, working with Mercy Ships is a sacrifice that means “completely uprooting their lifestyles” to volunteer on the vessel for at least two years. Flint and Casaletto wanted to help the kids become closer to one another, so they created a running club.
Students have enjoyed the activity, from practicing to getting jerseys to racing on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where the ship is docked for maintenance.
“Being able to help make their experience better by organizing sports for the kids is where I think the biggest impact is for me,” said Flint. “I’m building relationships with the kids because of our proximity to one another.”
