3 summers ago i helped lead a team of 26 people to europe to run a kids camp for a missions agency. total cost = $73,230.56.
One of the most challenging and amazing experiences of my life. I remember basking in the afterglow of the success of our high school students who created a 5 day kids camp from scratch, eating cheap sandwiches for lunch on the steps of Schoenbrunn castle, meeting another one of our student teams in Paris and worshipping together in our hotel lobby, watching some of my mentors and friends speak life into our high school kids. For how great those memories are, I live in the future. And in the future that begins now, I can count at least 20 of this team, 3 years later, doing remarkable things.
9 weeks in Kenya, 2 weeks in Mozambique, praying over blind women, loving orphans, dreaming about organizational systems that help indigenous leaders, teaching middle schoolers about global migration and cultural distance, studying economic variables in South Africa, consistently running an after school club in Maryland. This is probably not normal.
Every summer, the age old missions conversations starts again - are short term trips too expensive, do the ends justify the means, how much harm do they do, do these trips really change people? Don't get me wrong - these are good conversations to have. And I might be the worst offender on many parts, having spent about $160K in 6 weeks in that oh so interesting summer of 08.
You know 11 young men propagated a different world view 2000 years ago. What could 20 do tomorrow?
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