The Power of a Short Term Missions Trip

I love to read stories of how a short term mission trip causes life change for the people on that trip.  Read this story about how a weekend mission trip to Honduras sponsored by his church in Bedford Hills in 2002 opened Brock Barrett’s eyes to a new way of reaching out to the needy.

Barrett, founder of Air Calvary, a Mount Kisco-based Christian mission aviation charity, is now building a full-time air ambulance program for the central African country of Gabon.  Although his 2002 trip with seven other parishioners from the Bedford Community Church only included “light construction work” to help build a reservoir, he met a doctor at a local missionary hospital who alerted him to a great need for an air ambulance program in the region. But he was hooked. On his return, he founded Air Calvary to assist Christian missionaries with their work in remote areas.

This is the kind of exposure trip that helps us to see the needs in a community so different that our own urban situation. Back when I first started attending Park Community Church in the early 90’s, Park started a twice-annual trip called Vacation With A Purpose that still goes to today.  This trip would take a group of people, generally people who had been regular attenders and were ready for a different kind of vacation.

In our case, we were led by an excellent ST missions director at Park, Mary Coleman (Mary Mayo now), to an orphanage about 200 miles south of San Diego run by a Christian non-profit called Foundation For His Ministry.   We spent a week seeing God at work in the lives of missionaries, as well as migrant workers as we went into the migrant worker camps each day to help the children.

The stories of life change were awesome as people got out of the city routine, got a chance to let down the walls and share how this sort of trip was impacting them, and a chance to see people who had nothing (workers) worshiping God and thanking Him for all His blessings.  It is a powerful week and usually ends up with some people making a change in their life.