Today is the last day for the National Youth Workers Convention here in Atlanta. Mission trips still rise to the top of priorities with youth leaders we talked to here. We asked several what they look for from their Mission Discovery trip experience. “I want my youth and myself as well, to be taken out of their comfort zone,” says Jim Bates a youth pastor from Missouri, “I want them to depend on God.”

Laura Ice is a United Methodist youth pastor who has been on two Mission Discovery trips recently with here senior high youth. She’s headed to Jamaica with Mission Discovery this summer after two trips here in the U.S. She’s looking for a safe environment to expose here group to God’s work in another culture and to see their faith stretched.

Over and over in conversations with youth leaders here at this event we heard that their mission trip will have immediate impact in the life of a student, but most leaders saw mission trips as teaching life lessons. Everything learned on a mission trip will have impact later in life. Some even imagined that student walking back into the youth office as a 40 year old to say, “Thank you for what you taught me.”

Mission Discovery organizes 3 to 10 day mission trips in 11 nations including the United States. For more information about Mission Discovery trips visit www.missiondiscovery.org or call 800-767-8720.