Preparing for the mission field as a college student
It’s not uncommon for the time between a person becoming interested in cross-cultural missions and actually going overseas to be all of ten years. In this video, an aspiring missionary talks about what he did in college to keep his desire to serve fresh.
Preparing for the mission field as a college student
What did you do in college to prepare for the mission field?
Preparing for the mission field took various forms for me. When I was in college, I was able to go on two short-term missions trips, and I was able to use the skills that I had started to learn as a construction manager and as a builder in both those situations.
The other ways I was able to prepare were I got involved in a weekly prayer meeting where the focus of the prayer meeting was to pray for missionaries — that other people knew, that I myself knew, and that we were made aware of their needs whether it was through some staff on the campus, or maybe some other students had missionaries that they were involved with.
Another way to prepare is to look at what you want to be doing in the future and start researching, start learning different practical technologies, maybe methods that aren't used here in the U.S. but will be used over there. This applies to medicine, technology, construction, language.
The biggest thing for me was getting involved in a church that had a solid missions program, that was praying for missionaries, that was sending short-term teams overseas.
Another area that enabled me to stay focused on missionaries is actually supporting missionaries. You know, yeah, you're getting out of school, yeah, you're trying to pay off your school loans as quickly as possible, you're trying to live cheap, but there is huge blessing in being able to support other missionaries who are working all over the world because it keeps your vision, not on just what you're doing, but on what's happening throughout the world. I've got friends that are missionaries in Spain, in East Africa, in Miami, in Arkansas, and it's just really cool to be able to see how God's working in their lives. And that gives you a desire to continue pressing on.
Credits:
Produced by Mission Data International
Video Editor: Paul Nielsen
Cameraman: Peter Armstrong
Creative Commons Copyright
2009 Mission Data International
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