OPINION
PERSPECTIVE
Short-Term Mission Trips
Elliott Berger
Opinion Editor
Welcome to Missions Week at Walla Walla University! You may see frantic students rushing the Missions office, desperately filling out their applications in time for the early deadline at the end of this month. I admit to being one of these students. I have yet to cash in my longawaited time as a student missionary, but I would like to share what I think some of the benefits are of taking the time off to serve.
I once had a conversation with Jean-Paul Grimaud on the subject of cold showers. “Shock your body!” he said. It’s good for the body to be startled and to experience something new; it keeps life fresh and allows for growth. I can’t think of a better way to shock your body than to drop it off in a new country with a completely strange culture. It gives an opportunity to understand life from a new viewpoint.
“An opportunity to understand When you travel abroad for any reason, life from a new you are bound to return having learned something you never knew before. I spent viewpoint.” half a month in Namibia’s piece of the Kalahari Desert, and it blew my mind open to the idea that people in such a remote place could be so similar to me. Traveling gives you an opportunity to open your mind to the extraordinary and to experience something new and beneficial.
Serving as a missionary will allow you to share. Those of you who have not read Emily Star Wilkens’ African Rice Heart should pick a copy up as soon as you put The Collegian down. I found the book
incredibly easy to relate to as Wilkens talks through her days serving of in a remote part of Chad, Africa. The book remodeled for me the idea of serving. Wilkens may not have known what she was supposed to do or how she was helping the people there, yet it became clear that simply deciding to serve was a way of expressing her love for humanity and her desire to share in God’s love for people. Serving as a missionary can change not only the lives of the people you help, but may also change your own viewpoint. Seeing life from someone else’s eyes can foster understanding, and long-term service allows for the opportunity to fully immerse yourself in a new culture and to share in the life experience of being human and growing in God’s love. A wonderful gift, since when things grow, they tend to affect their surroundings.
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Shock Your Body
For more information on shortterm mission trip opportunities, call the Student Missions office at (509) 527-2010 or send an email to student.missions@wallawalla.edu.
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Walla Walla University, as well as other church organizations, offers many opportunities for students to serve short term, whether traveling around the globe or staying right here in the valley. This year, Student Missions’ spring break mission trips will be traveling to Belize and Peru; there
Some mission trips may not even require you to leave your home. When I was younger, my family participated in a program called “Children of Chernobyl,” hosting a Belarusian child for a six-week health respite. Vitali came from an area in Belarus that was greatly affected by the radiation fallout of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown in the late 1980s. The radiation caused Vitali and other children in his area to have stunted growth, as well as a host of other health problems. The program sent these children to the U.S. and other areas for six-week respites to get clean air, water, and food, and to clear the
In the six weeks that Vitali was here, he grew one and a half inches. But the physical benefits that Vitali got while he was here was not the biggest impact we made: When he went home, we sent him with money, clothes, toys, and a Russian–English Bible. When we heard from his family, it wasn’t about the toys or clothes or even the money that we heard about, but the Bible. They told us that every day they would come in early from working in their garden to read their Bible. It was great to know that we were able to make such a huge impact on someone’s life, all while bringing the mission work to our home, rather than traveling to the mission work.
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Many students have the great opportunity of serving all through the year for long periods of time, often for many years. However, an even greater number of students — due to time constraints, academic schedules, and money concerns — are unable to serve for such extended periods of time. For these students, shortterm mission trips are a much more realistic and feasible option for making an impact on people’s lives around the world.
radiation out of their systems.
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Opinion Editor
COLLEGIAN WISDOM
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Grant Gustavsen
will also be trips to India and Thailand just before school starts again in the fall. Over Presidents Day weekend, the Chaplain’s Office will be hosting a trip to Portland to serve the poor and homeless. Occasionally on Saturdays, Volunteer Ministries goes to downtown Walla Walla to serve in a variety of ways, including random acts of kindness.
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