By volunteering on local or international summer mission trips, you have the opportunity to make friends with new people. Mission trips also provide the ideal opportunity to grow spiritually and learn new skills. Volunteering on a local or an international mission trip involves exposing yourself to other cultures, which will broaden and change the way you approach your life and how you want it to be, not just today, but for years to come. Mission trips are game changing experiences and it’s easy to form bonds with your fellow volunteers as you experience it together.

Ask your youth group or church leader who is coming. See if you recognize any names on the list. If not, invite some friends to come along, or make contact with some people who are coming and make some friends! You will be spending the next few days with them, so it is important that you all build good relationships.

One of the most amazing things about summer mission trips is that the group bonds a lot during the time they spend together, and they create lasting friendships.

Joel Schnell is a regular Mission Discovery youth leader. He has this to say about how he prepares participants for his youth mission trips for the friendships and work ahead of them:

“I like to get the team to start preparing spiritually a few weeks before the trip, by spending time in prayer for those we will serve as well as the whole team. We spend time in God’s word getting our hearts ready for whatever He has planned for us. I pass out prayer cards with a name of another team member to start praying for before and during the trip and we reveal to one another at the end of the trip who we have been praying for. I push for flexibility and a willingness to allow the Spirit to lead. I treat a Mission Discovery mission trip as a training bootcamp to really prepare us for a lifelong mission trip back in our everyday lives in our own worlds. I like to push my students into an uncomfortable mission situation to help them see and rely on the power of God to help them through future tough times. I also like to help them keep their mission experience fresh and real well after we return home.”

 

Your time as a volunteer abroad will be a life changing experience. Mission Discovery can help you prepare in practical ways, to make your mission trip memorable, meaningful and be the place you can say you met some of your closest friends.