BRAINTREE -- On the surface, Sean Brown leads a life not that different from any other 18-year-old.

The 2025 Bishop Feehan graduate works as a landscaper, makes sandwiches at Jersey Mike's, and attends adoration daily at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Millis. He would be studying to be an electrician, but he's putting his career on hold. On Oct. 30, he will embark on a six-month mission trip to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in India, where he previously volunteered with his parish for three weeks over the summer. He hasn't been away from family and friends that long in all his life. He wanted to go with a friend, but he couldn't convince anyone else to make the journey.

"I guess I'm a little worried about getting extremely sick," he said. "I'm a little sad about all the plans I had with my friends that I'm going to miss over the winter, but I'm not too worried."

When he told his parents he planned to spend six months in Calcutta, his dad was adamant that he not go. His mom wanted him to reschedule the trip so he'd be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. His friends tried to convince him to stay. But to Brown, "it is what it is."

"I'll definitely miss home and all my friends, but that's just part of life," he said.

Brown grew up Catholic and attended Mass every Sunday, but only did so to make his mom happy. It wasn't until he joined St. Thomas's youth group in high school that he got serious about his faith. He is returning to Calcutta because he wants to dedicate part of his life to service. That's what his pastor, Father Sinisa Ubiparipovic, would always talk about at youth group meetings.

"It's so humbling," Father Ubiparipovic said. "I don't even think Sean really recognizes the depths of what he's doing and the impact it's having on everyone else in such a positive way. His life is so grace-dependent, so he recognizes grace and depends on grace."

Brown and 11 other parishioners from St. Thomas, as well as two from Hingham and six others from Texas, served in Calcutta in June and July. Brown didn't want to go on the trip at first. Father Ubiparipovic told him to pray on it and see if he changed his mind.

"After spending a lot of time in adoration, I felt called to go," he said. "It's our duty to serve the poor."

He and the others landed in Calcutta at 2 a.m. after a 48-hour journey from Logan Airport to London then on to New Delhi. Calcutta was more crowded and dirty than any city he had ever seen.

"When I saw it for the first time, it was really weird to see that level of poverty," he said. "It was a different world."

He worked with the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's order, in two of their houses: Daya Dan, a house for disabled orphans; and Kalighat, a home for the dying.

"It was really humbling to see, and put my own life into perspective, how blessed I truly was," he said of Daya Dan.

If not for the sisters, the children who lived there would likely be on the streets or in unsanitary local hospitals.

"They didn't just let the kids sit there and not care about them," Brown said. "They would try their best to get them to school, teach them, and they would feed them every single day. It was really beautiful to see how they were sacrificing for the kids."

He and the other volunteers played with the orphans, fed them, cleaned up after them, and did laundry. Despite their ailments, the children laughed and played all day. Feeding the orphans was hard, as many of them refused to eat or couldn't eat by themselves.

"For the first couple days, it was definitely difficult for me," Brown said. "But before I went to work, I started to go to adoration and would ask God to give me the charity I needed to serve them."

He met an 11-year-old boy named Rishi who was blind and had severe autism. Rishi was nonverbal and prone to self-harm, so he sat in a chair for most of the day. The first thing Brown would do each day at Daya Dan was play with Rishi in his chair and take him for walks. Brown and his friend Peter Keefe befriended Anato, another 11-year-old with severely disfigured arms and legs.

"He was a very, very smart kid," Brown said.

Anato could speak three languages, including English, and told Brown and Keefe what little he knew about his life. He had no idea where his family was or even if they were still alive. He had no memories outside of the orphanage. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up.

"It was definitely sad to see him have to go through all of that, but it was really a blessing to be able to be there for him, talk with him, joke with him at the table," Brown said.

When he first arrived at the home for the dying at Kalighat, he saw a man afflicted with elephantiasis, a disease that causes severe swelling of the legs, outside on the steps. That gave him a sense of what to expect inside. He could recall the people's gruesome injuries, the sounds of them crying out in pain, and the smell, as many of them could no longer control their bowels or bladders.

"They give them a dignified death instead of dying on the streets, and having somebody be there for them in their dying moments," he said.

One man begged him for a cigarette, and when Brown told him that the sisters forbade smoking, he punched him in the face. The man was so weak from illness that the punch didn't hurt.

"It was definitely very weird, especially at first," he said. "Once I got used to it a little bit, I realized how much of a blessing it was to be there for them."

Most of Kalighat's patients didn't have legs, so Brown would feed them and help them go to the bathroom. One man was missing a leg and had broken his remaining ankle. He was too heavy for the sisters to carry, so Brown and a seminarian from Denver would do it. Their circumstances made the two into close friends.

"They had such serious faith that they really cared about," Brown said of the seminarians, who were in Calcutta on a monthlong mission trip.

Being around the dying forced him to reflect on his own mortality.

"It reminded me of eternity, and that I should definitely focus on that," he said.

He started attending adoration daily when he returned from Calcutta. The mission, he said, made him realize how much better his life is when he trusts in God.

"It taught me to rely on God more, not in the way that the trip was so hard on me that the only reason I got through was because I relied on God, but more because at first I didn't really feel like serving these people," he said. "I didn't feel any charity toward them, as much as I knew I should, so I had to rely on God to give that to me."

He will return to Daya Dan and Kalighat on his next trip. He expects to have more responsibilities and serve in a leadership role. He's looking forward to seeing the orphans again.

"It really is a small sacrifice," he said. "It will definitely be kind of hard, but if I do it for joy of the Lord, for love of the Lord, I know it won't be too bad."