Every day students give up the comforts of home to enter foreign countries and share the light of Christ with others. This may be through sports, feeding the hungry, bandaging a wound or simply sharing an encouraging word, smile or touch. Some go for weeks, some go for months and some go for a lifetime.
Generations ago, being an international missionary meant a lifelong commitment to live in a foreign land with limited access to the civilized world. The word “missionary” generated names like Lottie Moon and Mother Teresa – people who dedicated their lives to foreign missions.
While this is still one kind of missions, today those seeking to witness internationally are no longer bound to this long term idea.
Students from the University of the Cumberlands are included in this list of missionaries. When asked why they wanted to serve overseas, they offered various reasons.
“I went to Guatemala this summer through my church. We spent 10 days in a village outside of Guatemala City called Tabacal,” said sophomore Courtney Fout. “I’ve always had a desire to serve people in need, and God laid out an opportunity for me to go international this past summer, and He provided every need.”
Junior Katie Smith said, “I went to Trinidad this summer for 12 days…God has been developing a passion in me for international missions for the past several years. I began praying for an opportunity to serve God internationally at the end of the summer of 2008. When I was told about the trip to Trinidad, I immediately began to pray about whether that was an opportunity that God was opening the door to.” 
Opportunities to students today desiring to serve overseas are unlimited. The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention alone sent 5,226 students on missions overseas in 2008. The various routes to international missions include but are not limited to: independent church trips, sports groups such as the International Sports Federation, religious groups such as Pioneers and Serving in Missions and medical groups such as the Center for Medical Missions. These groups organize teams of students to serve as international missionaries for weeks, months or years.
Because there are so many organizations sending students internationally, the doors to foreign missions have been opened wide to today’s generation of students.
To one UC student, junior Lindsey Jones, a two-week mission trip to Uganda this past summer was the realization of a lifelong dream. She had always wanted to go to Africa, and when she heard Amanda Walton, UC Admissions Counselor, speak at a Baptist Campus Ministries meeting last semester about her mission trip to Kenya with the International Sports Federation, Jones knew it was her opportunity to get involved.
Jones contacted the Federation, applied and was assigned to a team of strangers. After receiving multiple vaccines in the form of shots and pills and acquiring a passport, Jones joined with her team for the 28 hour journey to Uganda.
“I’m carrying Your hope to Africa…Wow, how long I’ve dreamed of this,” Jones wrote in her prayer journal during the first of many flights on the journey.
During her stay in Uganda, Jones’ team used sports as a tool to connect and share the message of Christ with children in schools and orphanages in many villages.
“It’s a lot easier to be passionate about something than to look your passion in the eyes,” Jones wrote upon her first experiences with the African people.
Lasting impressions were made on the people in Africa who were touched by the mission team. However, the mission team was impacted equally if not more by what they experienced.
Jones wrote in her prayer journal, “You are moved and filled with compassion when one young, sweaty, shoeless African boy calls out to You. You are moved when a country like Uganda seeks Your face when malaria, starvation, malnutrition, AIDS, pollution, political corruption and violence surround them. You are moved when a 20-year-old woman from the U.S. cries out to You on a tear stained pillow in Africa.”
UC students are learning that they can make a difference.
Opportunities to fulfill desires to serve on the foreign mission field are more accessible than ever before. However, these trips must be taken very seriously. Before entering a foreign land, participants must take whatever vaccines are necessary for the area they will be visiting. Often, missionaries still fall ill on the field, and medical care is not efficient or easily accessed.
Jones, for example, was sick from dehydration for three days of her trip. She was forced to spend that time in quarrantine in an African hotel, unable to call home.
Participants must also get a passport and raise enough funds for travel expenses, which can equal thousands of dollars. In addition, foreign missions often take place in areas where the Gospel is not accepted. Missionaries enter lands where Christianity is hated, war has swept over the country and disease kills millions, not to mention the physical and mental exhaustion that the missionaries endure.
Luke 10:2 says, “…the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Today’s generation of students are taking a risk and answering the call to become a worker for the Lord through foreign missions. Some go and return with the experience of a lifetime. Some go and realize their need to go back for a lifetime of experience.
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