Global Project

Missions Entrepreneur

webteam@intervarsity.org — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Gordon Govier

Missions Entrepreneur

Amanda Davis almost didn’t make it aboard that first trip to Uganda in 2008. It was ��ñ�� New England’s first Global Issues Internship in Uganda and the internship director Tom Brink was not sure freshmen were ready for the experience.

Amanda was a freshman at Wellesley. Her application was accepted because of a previous overseas ministry trip during high school. And because of that 2008 trip Amanda is today the co-founder of The Street Child Project, a ministry based in Uganda. She is also preparing to enter her senior year at Wellesley.

Discovering ��ñ��
Can a college student help found a ministry and complete her college education at the same time? In Amanda’s case the answer is yes. She grew up in North Carolina watching her parents, who were business owners and entrepreneurs. “That has made me somewhat spontaneous in my life,” she said. “I guess I consider myself a social entrepreneur.”

Her parents were not heavily involved in church, but they did send Amanda to Charlotte Christian School. When she arrived at Wellesley as a freshman, discovering ��ñ�� and getting involved in the fellowship seemed like a natural transition. It became a life-changing transition. She has dropped plans to attend law school afer Wellesley and will enroll in seminary instead.

“I grew up knowing God was important, but it wasn’t until I connected with ��ñ�� at Wellesley that I started pursuing God,” Amanda said. “What I learned as a member of a small group Bible study that freshman year I still use today—the techniques of observation, interpretation, application. I use these techniques to lead my volunteer teams through inductive Bible studies when I go to Uganda every six months.”

Founding a Ministry
Amanda learned about the Global Issues Internship to Uganda from others in her freshman Bible study and was encouraged to apply. The internship included long bus rides with members of FOCUS Uganda , their local partners (FOCUS is the Fellowship of Christian Unions. Like ��ñ��, it’s a member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.).

On those rides Amanda noticed that Serunjogi Andrew, an intern on staff with FOCUS, was often drawing and coloring his artwork. She offered to help him arrange an art auction to raise money for the ministry.

Andrew had a dream much bigger than art auctions. He dreamed of a ministry that used art to educate and rehabilitate street children. He asked her to partner with him. Reading Andrew’s emails after she returned home to the U.S. she could not dismiss them.

“I couldn’t get Andrew’s idea for this art school for street children out of my head. God worked on my heart every single day. There were many days when I said, ‘I’m a student, I’ve only been to Uganda once. I’ve only met Andrew a couple of times. I don’t know these kids we’re trying to help.’ It was only the peace of God instilled in my heart that encouraged me to pursue this Uganda commitment as a student. It didn’t make any sense. Still today it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But sometimes God calls us to do radical and absurd things.”

Amanda organized a team of volunteers, and at the end of 2008 and into 2009 she returned to Uganda to lead an art workshop for street children. During this trip Amanda had a birthday and turned 20. Also during the trip, The Street Child Project was officially launched. “God opened door after door after door and worked on my heart again and again, and I couldn’t ignore it,” she said.

Exactly one year later Amanda was in St. Louis attending ��ñ��’s Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference. She came not as many of her fellow students did, seeking God’s direction for her life, but rather as the executive director of a fledgling missions organization looking for advice and contacts to help the mission be successful.

Amanda was inspired by Urbana’s message of incarnation, taken from John 1:14. “The whole idea of incarnation ministry has profoundly affected the way that I live my life and the way that I conceptualize ministry,” she said. “I’ve made it a life goal to never miss Urbana. I want to have a booth for the Street Child Project the next time it comes around.”

Best Possible Outcome
When Tom Brink was first putting together the international internship in 2008, he did not imagine that one of the participants would launch their own ministry out of the experience. He sees it as one of the best possible outcomes.

“This strengthens the partnership we have with FOCUS Uganda,” he said. “It was wonderful to see an ��ñ�� student and a FOCUS staff start something together, independently of the two organizations.”

This summer, as she prepares another team of volunteers to travel to Uganda to work with The Street Child Project, Amanda is also setting up a U.S. arm of the ministry to help raise funds and mobilize volunteers. Even though she’s passionate about the Street Child Project, and intends to stay involved with it, Amanda says she has other goals she’s also working on.

One of those goals is graduating from Wellesley in the spring of 2011. She’s still on track to get her degree, even though her college education hasn’t gone quite as she expected. “��ñ�� has profoundly impacted my life as a student,” she said.

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Missions

God at Work in Haiti

webteam@intervarsity.org — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:00:00 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

God at Work in Haiti

Among those praying for the earthquake victims in Haiti and closely watching for news about the survivors of the devastation are ��ñ�� staff and students who have traveled to Haiti on recent Global Project trips and are planning return trips in 2010.

Near the Epicenter
Nick Johnson, a campus staff member at Georgia State University, has been taking groups of ��ñ�� students to Neply, Haiti, since 2007. “The epicenter of the quake was about 10-15 miles from Neply,” he reported this week. “The initial word (and it was very brief—it’s still impossible to get phone calls through) is that most houses are ‘broken.’”

In an article that described how students laid pipe and gave the village running water, Nick described how Bible study done in this environment was transformational for many students.

One student wrote later, “The Bible studies every morning were challenging and very relevant to what we were doing in Haiti. We were able to see Jesus speak about issues dealing with the poor as well as see Jesus speaking to rich men like Zacheus who, when they met Jesus, were transformed and gave their possessions to serve the poor.”

“We’ve seen three students make decisions to follow Jesus as a result of the trip over the past 3 years,” Nick reported. Others have collected shoes and clothes to send to Haiti, or led fundraisers on campus.

Jesus in Haiti
Jeffrey Nowak, a faculty member at Indiana University—Purdue University Fort Wayne, has led groups of ��ñ�� students on Global Project trips to Haiti during Spring Break in 2008 and 2009. Each year 15 students went, volunteering to work with Jesus in Haiti Ministries in Port-au-Prince.

“The impact on the students was life changing,” Jeffrey reported. “One student became a follower of Jesus on one of the mission trips, and several have made personal trips back to the mission to assist in subsequent summers or on breaks.”

Plans for 2010
Even before the earthquake Jeffrey was holding tickets for a return trip with his pastor to volunteer with Jesus in Haiti Ministries next month. “I will be there from the 10th-15th and be ready to do whatever is needed,” he said.

Social Work students from the University of Wisconsin—Madison are planning to work with Jesus in Haiti Ministries during a week-long Global Project scheduled for their spring break this semester.

Nick Johnson will be leading another group of students from Georgia back to Haiti also. “This year we were going to go to Cape Haitien, but in lieu of the earthquake we will be going back to Neply to do relief work,” he reported.

Campus Ministry in Haiti
Through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, ��ñ�� is affiliated with Christian students in Haiti, Groupe Biblique de Ecoles et Universités d’Haïti (GBEUH).
The impact of the earthquake on GBEUH’s ministry can only be imagined at this point, although some information is available.

��ñ�� Press has also just published a book about ministry in Haiti, Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle.

With a population living in extreme poverty before the earthquake, the needs in Haiti have only become more desperate after the earthquake. ��ñ�� students have discovered during past trips that God is at work in Haiti. In the weeks ahead, they will discover God is still at work in Haiti, both in their own lives and in the lives of those they assist.

SIDEBAR – Fort Wayne Student Returns to Haiti and Survives Earthquake

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Global Project

Missions

Prayer and Service

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:00:00 +0000

News

Teresa Buschur

Prayer and Service

Twelve ��ñ�� students traveled to Ghana, Africa, this past summer to serve alongside the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) members in a kindergarten, a pre-school, and a school for the deaf, teaching children and sharing the Gospel of Christ. Both American and Ghanaian students participated together as they developed prayer groups in local communities, led seminars on topics about health and sexuality, and proclaimed the love of God in local churches.

Prayer Passion Rebirthed
The goal of the team’s time in Ghana was to strengthen the existing work of local churches and help establish community Bible studies within those churches. Prayer was a major component of this outreach and service project.

“I’ve seen a rebirth of the passion for prayer in these students,” said project director Joshua Settles. One of the participants from Vanderbilt University said, “The Gospel is now alive in my life in a way it hasn’t been before.”

Students on the Vanderbilt campus have developed an intensity and intentionality about prayer, with several students meeting both early in the morning and late into the evening to pray. “Students have come back to campus with a passion for evangelism and outreach. Christians who never would have begun spiritual conversations on campus now are excited about sharing their faith with others,” said Joshua Settles.

Career Directions Changed
At Georgia Tech, after returning from Ghana, a student changed his major from computational media to social work, a direct result of his active participation. While at the University of Tennessee—Knoxville, the only Caucasian student in the ��ñ�� chapter has developed a deep desire to plan and host more cross-cultural events across campus.

Leaders of IFES in Ghana have reported that the Ghanaian participants in this project developed a deeper desire to pursue cross-cultural activities. Global projects through ��ñ�� are valuable experiences because participation gives students opportunities for cross-cultural learning.

��ñ�� offers students across the country countless opportunities to learn together as they proclaim the Gospel of Christ and serve others around the world.

More information on Global Projects available here.

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Los Angeles students link to Ghana School

webteam@intervarsity.org — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 05:00:00 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Los Angeles students link to Ghana School

College students in the Los Angeles area have some of the best educational resources available through the University of Southern California, the University of California-Los Angeles, and other nearby schools. But ��ñ�� staff at those Los Angeles and Orange County schools believe that a visit to the Amazing Grace Preparatory School in central Ghana, Africa, provides an important added value to their education.

For the last dozen years, ��ñ�� students from Los Angeles area colleges and universities have been traveling to Ghana during their summer vacations as part of the Adom Partnership. “There’s a whole group of alumni who would say that ��ñ�� changed their lives and a big part of that was this project,” said Jon Ball, the associate divisional director for ��ñ�� in Los Angeles. Jon is also the chairman of the board of Adom Partnership International, which operates Amazing Grace School.

This past summer ten college students and staff on the ��ñ�� team spent four weeks at the Amazing Grace School. Linda Kim, the staff member who led the group, said that they did construction work and helped teach some classes. But the most important thing they did was build relationships and learn cross-cultural skills. “We taught the students a few of our songs and had them teach us some phrases and songs in their native language, Twi” Linda said. “And we had a chance to talk with the students about Jesus.”

The relationships may last far beyond this summer. “Because the Adom Partnership exists, summer missionaries can have an opportunity to stay connected to the school for many years,” she said. “I don’t think students on most ��ñ�� summer projects have such an opportunity to stay involved after the project.”

The textbooks are old; one building is still under construction, and the school struggles to pay the teachers’ salaries. But little by little, with the help of ��ñ�� students, the facility is improving. And the education that the Ghanaian boys and girls receive continues to be top notch.

The school’s first 9th grade graduating class in 2005 had 16 students. Most were in pre-school when Jon Ball made his first trip in 1995. All of them passed the national high-school entrance exams, guaranteeing admission to secondary school. Few schools can match that achievement. Several students’ scores are so high that they can be placed in an elite secondary school. “Students who are children of farmers are performing at an academic level with the best in the country,” Jon said. “It really is doing a phenomenal job of breaking the cycle of poverty.”

The ��ñ�� students bring more than just school supplies and a few weeks of manual labor.

“For Ghanaians in this poor village to see white, latino and black Americans doing manual labor under the direction of local skilled workers…I’m not sure words can capture what that does for the local Ghanaians in terms of empowerment,” Jon said. It also lends credibility to the school. “Local parents see Americans come consistently year after year. The parents know they can trust the school with their kids.”

The Adom Partnership is the vision of a Presbyterian pastor, the Reverend Joseph Mante, and his wife Florence. Reverend Dr. Mante has pastored 19 village churches in Ghana’s Ashanti region, and now serves as dean of Trinity Theological Seminary in Accra, Ghana. Studying in the U.S. during the early 1990s, Reverend Mante shared his vision with Jon Ball and others. ��ñ�� students started traveling to Ghana on a regular basis, and the Adom Partnership was established. Adom means “grace” in the Akan language of Ghana.

Currently all ten American members of the Partnership board are ��ñ�� alumni, from seven different colleges in the Los Angeles area.

“We all are deeply appreciative of the common values we have through ��ñ��,” Jon said. “Those enable us to work well as a board together, because we’re not hashing through some basic issues of worldview, faith, commitment to missions, incarnational ministry, approach to Scripture, etc. All those we have in common, so we’re able to work really well together as a board from that common basis.”

Some ��ñ�� alumni will sponsor children through the Adom partnership. Others are getting their churches involved in the partnership. Jon said that one student at USC is planning to return to Ghana as a math teacher, to teach at the school.

A simple partnership and a long term commitment, deeply rooted in the Gospel message, is changing lives in Ghana, and in California.

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Campus Ministry

Following Christ to the Ends of the Earth

webteam@intervarsity.org — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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Following Christ to the Ends of the Earth

Forty-four ��ñ�� Global Project teams took students abroad this summer (plus one to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota). The teams ranged in size from four to 37 members. During Global Projects students have the opportunity to see God at work and hear his voice speak to them in some of the most extreme environments imaginable. Here are excerpts from reports from four of the teams.

Taipei, Taiwan: For this week and next week, we have been working as teachers for an English learning day-camp for blind and visually impaired students. We are working side-by-side daily with non-Christian Taiwanese college student teaching assistants. Two nights ago we went to karaoke with our teaching assistants, and tonight we have invited them to attend an evangelistic Bible study.

Each of us are teaching a group of 3-7 blind and visually impaired . The first couple days were fairly difficult due to lack of appropriate-level printed Braille teaching materials, but our team has adjusted well.

Cairo, Egypt: This week, we had our most significant incident in Mokattam, the garbage collectors community that we are serving. A team of students on their own initiative went and visited an ostracized widow they had previously visited as part of the ministry to the handicapped. They got deeper into her life and her story and wept with her as they entered into her extreme pain of her life of loneliness yet the strongest faith in God they have ever encountered.

In response, they have spent the last two days cleaning her home that probably has not seen a good cleaning in years. She has wept because of the kindness she has received from the students, and our students are weeping because of the brokenness of our world.

Kolkata (Calcutta), India: So I finally broke. After two weeks of internalizing the suffering I saw every where I looked, my heart couldn’t hold it in any longer. It all came out at the slum school in New Market where we spend our time attempting to teach. The students had finished their dance practice and unexpectedly asked Koreena to pray for them. As she was praying the tears started rolling down my cheeks. The continual tension I’d felt in Kolkata seemed to overflow, and I was helpless to make it stop. I just wanted to feel joy and gladness in the midst of a city that had more suffering than I could handle.

Bangkok, Thailand: I remember the first leper home we entered [where there] lived an 80-year-old man and his wife who was also fairly old. He had been suffering from the effects of leprosy for over 40 years. He had also been staying in that very house for about 40 years. All his toes and fingers were gone, just his knuckles remained. His face had deteriorated so much it was hard for me to look at him. But despite suffering from leprosy, he was a faithful man of God and still is.

It simply boggled my mind to see how thankful he was to God even in the physical state of his body and the suffering of all sorts that unquestionably came with it.

Read more reports and view student videos at the Global Projects website.

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Global Urban Trek 2007 - Bangkok

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:00:00 +0000

News

David Nguyen

Global Urban Trek 2007 - Bangkok

On Monday, the team took a trip to visit CCD (Christian care for Children with Disabilities), a site that the Bangkok team once worked with. After touring the facility, we went over to the government wards where they keep children suffering from Cerebral Palsy (CP), a brain defect acquired from birth, which in plain language, limits the person drastically from motor functions such as moving limbs.

Because of the religious and cultural beliefs in Thailand, a son or daughter born with CP is seen as merely a result of bad karma. Hence, little if any value is given to the newborn and they are discarded from the family. The ward houses rooms filled with these children of various ages, most of who are unresponsive to environmental stimuli, even touch, because they have lacked human interaction all their lives.

One of CCD’s ministries is to take some of these children back to their own facilities to play with them and work with them, giving them the social and environmental interaction they need in order to develop. But CCD only has room and staff for a few at a time, so most of the children are stuck in the wards all week.

When I first entered the ward, there was a potent odor (I figured it was due to the lack of bathing they receive). There were probably about 16 to 20 beds, with 2 children in each bed. They lie in their beds all day, 7 days a week (which is why their CP condition gets worse and worse as the days go by).

Some even had their arms and legs tied to the bed frame to keep them from hurting themselves or the other child on the bed they share. If I remember correctly, there were only 2 workers in the room, but even they didn’t interact with the children very much. As a result, little is done to improve the children’s condition on a daily basis.

As I went from bed to bed, I was very discouraged by how unresponsive the children were. I was upset with God because I knew he is sovereign, but do these children know that? And what did he expect me to do about it?

I thought to myself, “What am I supposed to do? There’s nothing I can do for these children, God!” I even cried out to God, “Why did you allow this? What did they do to be in this, almost non-existent state?”

The next thing I knew, one of the workers handed me a bowl of rice, meat, and vegetables to see if I wanted to try feeding them. I thought about it, then hesitated, and handed it back to her. I guess I was afraid that I might accidentally cause them to choke because they lie on their backs even when they eat. Then I realized they’ve been in that position all their lives, so eating on their backs is something they’ve mastered already. After seeing Janet feed them, I had to give it a try so I asked for the bowl.

I was disgusted at myself for hesitating initially at what turned out to be such a simple, yet deeply moving act of service. I gave it a shot and began scooping one spoon of rice after another, dropping them into the mouths of the 3 hungry girls in front of me.

Immediately after the first spoon emptied, tears began filling my eyes. I remember Janet coming over briefly saying, “How’s it going, Dave” and I pretended to be okay, making sure she didn’t see my watery eyes. But inside, I was somewhere in-between cursing God’s name and praising it for the simple lesson of compassion he was teaching me in that moment. Even now, I don’t really know what happened. I was moved! I think I felt God’s compassion. Those who know me well will know that having compassion is the one thing I ask God for the most, because I lack it so much.

David Nguyen is a student from San Leandro, California, and a participant in ��ñ��’s Global Urban Trek to Bangkok this summer. Read more about the Bangkok Urban Trek and the other Global Urban Trek teams at urbana.org.

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Sharing the Gospel around the World

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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Sharing the Gospel around the World

��ñ�� provides students opportunities each summer to demonstrate the love of Christ and proclaim the Gospel through service around the world. This summer, one team of staff and students is in Thailand sharing God’s love with women to show them God’s passion for them regardless of their life circumstances.

��ñ�� staff and students partner with existing ministries as they do God’s work in Thailand. One of the participants on this year’s outreach shared, “A lady named Te Te opened a hostel for girls in 1989 because many of them were being sold into prostitution. It was out of a need to protect these girls that Te Te began to instruct them in the Word of God and provide them with an education.

“While I was there, we spent a whole day on music, learning how to play the guitar, keyboards, and to sing. They taught us a song in the Karen language It is beautiful to hear them singing in their own language.”

Hundreds of ��ñ�� students and staff are going to locations around the world to serve and share the Good News of Christ this summer, among them Sarajevo, Romania, and Mexico City. Through Global Urban Trek, and other Global Projects ��ñ�� staff and students serve others as Jesus did. “God lives in us and we live in Him. Others can experience Him through us,” a participant in Bangladesh said.

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Austria Graduate Student Global Project

webteam@intervarsity.org — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:00:00 +0000

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Craig Gartland, Midwest Regional Director, Graduate Faculty Ministries

Austria Graduate Student Global Project

A team composed of seven University of Illinois graduate students and two ��ñ�� staff members will spend nine days working with Austrian colleagues in Vienna, Austria. The trip to work with ÖSM-Wien – like ��ñ��/USA, an affiliate of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students [IFES] – is ��ñ��’s first-ever graduate student Global Project to Vienna.

Why Austria?
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U of I) and the Technical University of Vienna (TU), have an exchange program. Three years ago, staff member David Suryk informed me that the U of I Grad chapter was benefiting from the presence of Austrian students. A physics student named Roman attended ��ñ��’s Urbana 03 Student Missions Convention. Roman returned to Vienna with a vision for starting the first graduate and faculty Bible study at TU.

A new Vision and a new Partnership
As grad students from Vienna continued to come to the U of I and get involved in ��ñ��, the American students in the Grad chapter started to think about how they could encourage and support Roman and help establish graduate student ministry in Vienna. David began correspondence with Ewald and Constanze Ring, who were on staff with ÖSM.

An invitation was extended by Ewald and we are responding. We pray that our presence will be an encouragement and blessing. In terms of its secular culture and decreasing church attendance (19% of Austrians regularly attend church, compared to 47% in the U.S.), Austria is seen by many as hard soil for the Gospel. It is a privilege for us to come alongside of the work that God is already doing in Vienna and help with the vision that Ewald, Roman, and others have for the ministry to grow in depth and breadth.

Our Team (clockwise from top left: Tara, Joe, Laura, Paul, Nina, Craig [me!], David, Ann, Alan) departs on March 16. We pray that we may each be able to share our lives and our faith with students in Austria. We also pray that our project would bear fruit that is lasting for the ministry in Austria.

Highlights of our Project:

March 19-21: Outreach Booktable at the Vienna Univ. of Life Sciences
Monday, March 19: Main Student Group Meeting in Vienna
Thursday, March 22: Outreach talk in Linz, Austria, with Andrew Page (IFES staff)
March 22-24: Pioneering Project for Grad Fellowship at the Vienna Technical University
Throughout the week: Bible studies and talks led by team members (and informal conversations)

Check it out on the Web:

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Graduate Faculty Ministry