Picking Your Spots

As long as I've been involved at the BSU, we've always taken a mission trip over Spring Break. I'm a big fan of the concept, as it allows students to see sights, experience cultures and be involved in ministries that they might never have otherwise. As a student I went to Winnipeg Canada, Washington D.C. and the southern most tip of Texas. Those were all great experiences that broadened my view of what life is like in other places and how people are seeking to fulfill God's work there.

Once I was responsible for leading the ministry, a new question arose: How do you decide where to go? Planning a trip like that can be a very daunting task, and to this day it still challenges me. Certainly prayer must be the first priority, but at some point it's time to start knocking on doors and seeing which one opens up.

I've developed a short list of criteria that has been helpful in the past, and which was used again by the Lord this year. As I originally began to write this post, this particular section got really long. I'll condense it into a few short sentences with no explanation (hopefully it really doesn't need any): the location has to be a destination students would be interested in visiting and it has to be within reasonable driving distance (you can get there or back in a day).

This year we were planning on going to Chicago. My friend Paul had taken a group there last year and had a great experience with a local ministry there. In fact, they're going back this year as well. Excellent! Chicago fits both criteria, and the ministry itself sounded like something we'd love to join.

It's obvious in hindsight, but I certainly shouldn't have started promoting the destination to students before actually contacting the ministry. But it was October and the trip was over five months away! When I finally got around to calling them some time in November, it turned out the ministry was already completely booked and we wouldn't be able to serve there. So much for my planning ahead.

At that point my life was getting very busy, with Thanksgiving break approaching and then the end of the semester. I was finishing up a seminary class which required writing a research paper* and then was thinking about my upcoming trip to Turkey. In short, I forgot all about Spring Break.

*I'd rather be that guy on America's Funniest Home Videos who gets hair ripped from his body in some horrible hot wax experiment than write a research paper. I'd rather go on a marathon of country "music" concerts than write a research paper. On second thought, that might be going a bit too far...

After getting back to the States, I knew I would quickly have to come up with something different for our Spring Break trip. The very first day of class we had our weekly dollar dinner, and Amber and Jess were both talking about signing up to go to Chicago. Oops! I had to let them know Chicago wasn't happening, even though I didn't know where we would actually end up.

The next morning (Tuesday) I talked with Karin about where we might go. She said Jake had mentioned that it would be great to go back to Smyrna, TN. His freshman year was the last of three consecutive trips we took there. Community Servants is a great ministry and I'm a big fan of John and Bruce, the two guys who lead the ministry. Since we've been there before, all it would take is a phone call and we'd be in business! I talked to John and he was excited to have us come and help them again, unfortunately our week was the only week they were both going to be out of town - so it wasn't going to work out. Doh! Now what?

I emailed Kelly King who had previously offered her services in searching for possible locations. Within the hour I had a Word document with seven different possibilities. The next morning (now Wednesday) I began to go through the list and work through my previously mentioned criteria. Five locations were out of reach of my driving restriction, which left us with two options: Cedar Rapids, IA and Arlington, TX. Unfortunately for Cedar Rapids, it did not meet my "desired destination" requirement.*

* I feel a bit like Benedick here from Much Ado About Nothing. He said, "I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter?" Indeed there was a time where I took every opportunity to poke fun at Iowa, but those days are long behind me. I am now a fan of the state and this is not intended to be taken as a shot in any way. Perhaps I should add a third spring break mission trip criteria that states a destination cannot be too close, either.

Now it's time to investigate the ministry a bit and see if it's somewhere we'd like to serve. I check out their website, missionarlington.com, and it sounds pretty good. I decide to email Bill Victor, who used to live in the DFW area, to see what he knows about it. Before giving them a call I really wanted to get a few outside opinions first.

While waiting to hear back from Bill, I hopped on Facebook as I frequently do. Given that I have 471 "friends" on Facebook, I really never know what's going to show up on the home page. On this particular occasion, one item was a note posted by my friend Scott Bryant. He'd written a few blog posts on vision and the most recent one had prompted someone to leave a comment. Their comment was about this great ministry that will leave you "BLOWN AWAY." I'm sure you can anticipate the ministry: Mission Arlington. Before the email from Kelly I'd never even heard of the place, and now I was reading a lavish recommendation for it.

So I just sat there smiling and shaking my head in amusement/surprise/satisfaction as God presented His answer. Of course I then got an email from Bill giving them two thumbs up. I had a great conversation with the volunteer coordinator and enjoyed telling him the story of how God directed us their way. Even though I had to ask if there was availability for us to serve there, I already knew the answer was yes.

So that's the story of how God has directed our plans for Spring Break this year. Obviously I'm excited to see what He has in store for us and I hope to pass that excitement on to as many students as possible!