"Verano de Servicio" - Our 2015 Intern Reflects on Her Summer of Service

In 2013, UMVIM, SEJ implemented an internship program to develop the leadership skills of a young person within the United Methodist Church. We were so pleased to welcome Lindsey Brown of the Memphis Conference as our 2015 Summer Intern. Lindsey is a nursing major at Union University, and despite her young age, has already traveled to Nicaragua 8 separate times on short-term trips. Read on to learn more about her summer as the UMVIM, SEJ Intern!

Domestic Placement

Lindsey began her summer at Alabama Rural Ministry (ARM), a project on the UMVIM Mission Opportunity List that works to end substandard housing and empower the young children in and around Tuskegee, Alabama. A quick look through Lindsey’s photo albums will show you how much she loves ministering to kids, and this really shined during her time at ARM. 

She reminisced about a young boy she met during ARM’s Sonshine Day Camp, who spent the first week of camp being polite, obedient, and helpful to the teachers, but behaved exactly the opposite the following week. As it turned out, this little boy’s parents were separated, and he had spent the first week with one parent and the second week with the other, which dramatically influenced his behavior. “This really got to me,” she said. “It made me realize the magnitude of how these kids’ home environment play into their behavior. However, we were able to look in his eyes and tell him that we love him, the Lord loves him, and that we both forgive him. Despite negative influences at home, through Sonshine Day Camp he was influenced by people who love him, and was exposed to God’s Word as well! I am thankful for my time here and the relationships that formed.”

International Placement

Lindsey’s international placement had her visiting Costa Rica for the first time, though she is no stranger to Central America. “I was extremely surprised by the differences between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, which I naively assumed would be more similar than they are. This realization is yet another reason I am so thankful for this internship.”

UMVIM, SEJ Executive Director Paulette West connected Lindsey with Rice and Beans, a ministry that engages in evangelism, feeding programs, and construction efforts. She spent much of her time leading Bible Schools, where once again, God was able to use Lindsey and her gift of connecting with children. She even had the opportunity to translate in a community where there are many Nicaraguan refugees. “It is so cool to see the Lord use my past experiences and passions in these moments,” Lindsey said.

Lindsey also recalls the rich spiritual and cultural experience she had during her first week. “There were people from Costa Rica, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the United States all in one place with the same mission to serve the people of Costa Rica in the Lord’s name. Hearing over a hundred of us sing out to the Lord in two different languages simultaneously was a beautiful thing. Yes, it was as amazing as it sounds! I have so many brothers and sisters all over the world, and have made amazing connections for future mission opportunities!”

Young People in Mission

Our summer interns are an integral part of our annual Young People in Mission event. Lindsey helped us behind the scenes in so many ways, from engaging with the speakers and workshop leaders, to assisting the Design Team in executing their vision. Lindsey also led a family group comprised of high school graduates who were preparing to enter college, and we invited her to lead a workshop based on her experiences at Alabama Rural Ministry. “It was humbling to trust in the Lord to give me guidance during that time, as public speaking is not something I typically enjoy!” 

We are so very grateful to Lindsey and the passion she brought to our team this summer. We wish her the best as she finishes school, and our prayers follow her as the Lord guides her on her career path. If you or someone you know might be interested in the UMVIM, SEJ Summer Internship Program, click here to learn more about our previous interns, or contact Paulette West at paulette_west@umvim.org for more information.

{Guest Blogger} A Unique UMVIM Trip That Empowers Women in Honduras

By Kathy Waller, Brunswick, GA
 
For some reason, it has taken a little longer for me to process our recent trip to Honduras. Perhaps it's because over the past year, this trip was ever changing and continued to be so until the very end, making it impossible to do things independent of God. I speak the truth when I say I found myself leaning on God's grace throughout the entire endeavor, and He carried me as I knew He would. I would also like to clear my conscience and admit that I cannot sew and up until a few months ago, I had absolutely no desire to learn. I consider my meager attempt at sewing a God driven skill that I am working to conquer...and I humbly admit I have a long way to go. Not only does God call on those that have no idea what they are doing, but He has a sense of humor about it. Thus the "Rags to Riches Menstrual  Mission" was born.

 God's hand was there from the beginning, convincing a small group of ladies to take on a huge task of sewing a product so personal yet so necessary in a community with limited resources. Knowing that WOW, the women's group in our church, took it upon themselves to finance the sewing project made it seem more like a "sisterhood" for everyone concerned. Of course it didn't take much for the men on the team to embrace our project as they are unique in their own right and are careful not to take themselves too seriously. One fella even strapped on his tool belt and tried his hand at making a Mama cloth. (Rest assure Todd, construction is your vocation). Not only were we planning to teach the ladies how to make their own "Mama cloth" pads, but we traveled to Honduras with just shy of four hundred pads beautifully stitched for the women of Subirana by a women’s sewing small group in our church.

We were a mere party of three, no one person really proficient in sewing, and only one of us able to speak their language. We met with several shy but eager to learn women who had never touched a sewing machine, as well as several children that came along to add to the chaos. (Once again, thank you Lord for Jessica, the piped piper of children, who is fluent in Spanish.) Some of the ladies were able to catch on quickly and move on to other sewing projects. However, no matter the level of skill, I believe every woman was able to experience a sense of accomplishment for their effort. They were polite, patient, and graciously expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to learn something useful for their everyday lives. 

Quite honestly, we had no idea what to expect. It turns out, there is at least one skilled seamstress among the ladies who was happy to continue the sewing group. I pray that this ministry will allow the women to continue to grow closer in Christ and support one another just like the small groups have in our church. It was through generous donations that we were able to leave two new sewing machines, along with a surplus of fabric and notions. Our final meeting consisted of twenty-three women singing God's praises, and ever since I have been thanking God daily for allowing me to be part of the "Rags to Riches Menstrual Mission of 2015."

Did you have an awesome experience on a recent UMVIM trip you'd like to share? Follow this link to submit your story!

Carlton Complex Fire Recovery - Pacific Northwest Conference

Below is an email from Jim Truitt, the Disaster Response Coordinator for the Pacific Northwest Conference. He is currently seeking volunteers to help with the needs below:

 

In 2014 we suffered our states largest wildfire in history. 256,000+ acres were burned and over 300 homes were lost. 45 of those homes had no insurance and the Long Term Recovery Group has laid out a three year plan to rebuild the homes. We did not get a FEMA declaration so the materials have to be provided through donations and grants. UMCOR gave us a $270,000 grant for materials and we have pledged $237,000 so far.  We are partnering with multiple faith-based groups and  we are on track to complete the houses in phase one by next spring. We need skilled volunteers to help us finish the task.

Now, this year we suffered wildfires in the same general area that covered three times as much acreage. We don’t know yet how many homes were lost. We’ve heard estimates in the 200 range. The State and Federal agencies were in the field last week and will be again this week doing a preliminary damage assessment (PDA). We won’t know until the PDA is complete how many additional houses we will have to build but our guesstimate is in the neighborhood of 30. We also don’t know if we will get a Presidential declaration for Individual Assistance. Regardless, we are going to need financial assistance and volunteers to help us rebuild. 

We would really appreciate your help spreading the word. Anyone that’s interested can contact me (umvimdisasterresponse@comcast.net) or Ronda Cordill, r_cordill@hotmail.com for additional information. 

If you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Thanks again for your support.

Jim Truitt
UMVIM Disaster Response Coordinator
PNW Conference United Methodist ChurchFacebook.com/umvim.pnwumc
@PNWERT

Large Group Prepares for United Methodist Young Adult Mission Service

By Elliott Wright

Thirty-seven young adults are [spent] most of August preparing in Zimbabwe for mission service around the world through The United Methodist Church.

They are from 16 countries and represent the 2015 class of international Global Mission Fellows, who spend two years in ministries focused on justice and community development. In July, 15 new Global Mission Fellows were commissioned for service in the United States. Global Mission Fellows is a program of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and part of its Generation Transformation emphasis on young adults in mission.

The group undergoing orientation in Harare, Zimbabwe, will be commissioned on August 30 at the Revelation United Methodist Church there. Bishop Eben K. Nhiwatiwa, leader of the Zimbabwe Episcopal Area will preside. To be “commissioned” is to be designated by the church for a special purpose. Bishop John K. Yambasu of Sierra Leone, vice president of Global Ministries, will preach at the service.

Also...commissioned [was] Innocent Phrytoil Afful, a global missionary from Ghana, who is coordinator for orphans and vulnerable children for the Churches of Christ in the Congo, an ecumenical ministry based in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Of the 37 young adults, the majority is from Africa and many will be placed in other parts of the vast continent, none in their home countries. Missionaries are by definition “sent” by God and the church to cross borders and boundaries in taking the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ to all places.

Some of the new Global Mission Fellows will also work in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe. A dozen are graduates of Africa University, a pan-African institution related to the United Methodist Church in Mutare, Zimbabwe. Alumni of the university among the new Global Mission Fellows are from across Africa. Four of the international fellows are from the United States.

Work sites are truly international. Relinjoy Pabrua, who is from Manila in the Philippines, will be working with a community development project in Grenada in the West Indies; Wakili Albert Abbo from Jalingo, Nigeria with a new congregation in Dublin, Ireland; Evans Ndadzungira from Chimanimani, Zimbabwe with an environmental protection project in the Philippines; Kelsey Gatza from Chicago, Illinois, USA with a community-based ministry in Johannesburg, South Africa; Dorcas Samantha Ewoodzie from Accra, Ghana in an ecological program in Kenya; and Edwin Castillo from the Dominican Republic as a communicator in a medical service in Nicaragua. (Click here for a full list of the fellows, including where they are from and will work.)

 “This is an exciting new venture in mission,” said the Rev. Dr. Judy Chung, Global Ministries’ associate general secretary for missionary services. “Global Mission Fellows is one expression of our Generation Transformation focus on young adults in mission. The young people leave their home environment, identify with a new community, and not only provide real assistance to their projects but also better equip themselves for leadership roles in church and society in the complex world in which we live.”

The United Methodist Church has organic units (regional “annual” conferences) in the United States, Eurasia, large parts of Africa, and the Philippines. It has mission partnership across Asia and Latin America/Caribbean, with personnel, projects, and partners in more than 125 countries. It has missionaries in 60 countries. U.S. immigration policy does not grant entrance visas to international short-term young adult missionaries.

The service of commissioning on August 30...was developed with the assistance of the Rev. Dr. Beauty R. Maenzanise, dean of the faculty of theology at Africa University.

UMVIM, SEJ is excited to congratulate the following Fellows commissioned from the Southeastern Jurisdiction:

Hilary Glover 

Mississippi Annual Conference 

Placement: Grenada

Barbara Rogers 

North Carolina Annual Conference 

Placement: Russia

Eric & Liz Soard: Building Meaningful Relationships in Tanzania

In 2015, we are highlighting UMC missionaries who have been commissioned from the Southeastern Jurisdiction to serve around the world. Many of these missionaries accept volunteers to help with the important and necessary ministries they have established or are in partnership with. Contact UMVIM, SEJ for more information on how to serve!   Building Meaningful Relationships in Tanzania Eric and Elizabeth Soard are a young couple on the forefront of the United Methodist effort in Africa. Together since college at Lambuth University, they felt a calling to Africa, and began their time on the continent as volunteers in a country that would eventually become their second home: Tanzania. Presently, they are commissioned UMC Missionaries in the Lake Zone near Lake Victoria, where they are church planters and discipleship trainers. Along for the journey are their 3 sons, Derrick, Kaleb, and Micah. The Local Community The Soards have many roles and responsibilities in the Lake Zone, including laying the foundation for the first UMC University in Tanzania. For the last three years, they have concentrated their efforts on building up the local church body, and have established 10 new churches so far. "Our focus is on building the local community of Christ, to mobilize them to engage with each other and the community around them" says Eric. "We want them to be able to the answer the questions, 'Would your community notice if you weren't here?' and furthermore, 'Would your church members miss this part of their lives if you weren't here?'" Through intentional discipleship and leadership training, the Soards are ultimately leading these congregations to be self-leading, self-replicating, and self-sustaining. UMVIM Teams and Building Relationships While the Lord has equipped the Soards for their work in Tanzania, they cannot do it alone. The churches belong to the local congregations, but UMVIM teams are needed to help where they lack the resources to cross the finish line. Over the last couple years, they have asked the members of their local congregations what they would consider the most valuable part of having volunteers serving alongside them. They answered, "knowing people are praying for us, taking the time to offer their knowledge to us, and building relationships with us." A mission journey to Tanzania with the Soards might be filled with bumpy roads and a lot of dust, but it serves as the background to the warmth and hospitality you will experience while there. So many teams opt to stay in the comfortable cities and more developed areas of the country, but the extra effort you spend getting to this part of Tanzania will be rewarded with meeting the wonderful people, sharing meals with them, and being given the opportunity to sit down and talk to them about the place they call home. "The work is important," says Eric, "but it's secondary to the relationships."

Earlier this summer, UMVIM, SEJ Executive Director Paulette West traveled to Tanzania to personally visit with the Soards to become more familiar with their mission, and to help establish sister-to-sister church partnerships here in the SEJ. (Click the video above for a recap of her time there!) If you are interested in learning more about serving short-term in Tanzania, or what a meaningful partnership with the Soards could look like for your church, please contact Paulette West at paulette_west@umvim.org or Eric Soard atsoard.eric@gmail.com. You can also follow the Soards' journey on their blog, ingodslife.blogspot.com.

Mission Volunteer Opportunities

If you are being called to serve in mission service beyond a week or ten days, the Mission Volunteer Program sponsored by Global Ministries provides opportunities for individuals and couples to serve from two months to two years in a variety of ministries around the world. Here are some examples:

In Honduras there are ministries that need volunteers to serve as youth leaders, to coordinate team projects, and to minister to children with disabilities.

In Africa, a volunteer is needed at the Malawi United Methodist Church Conference Offices. The position is for an international financial management consultant. This is a partnership with the Church of the Resurrection. The main responsibility is to develop and implement a financial accounting management system.

Our missionary in Chile is seeking a volunteer to serve as a gardener and groundskeeper.

The McCurdey School in Espanola, New Mexico has ongoing needs for directors.

In Haiti there is a need for a couple to serve as volunteers-in-mission team coordinators.

To respond to these volunteer requests and others, become a Mission Volunteer. Apply now at www.missionvolunteers.org in time for our October 21-24 training event. For more information, please contact Malcolm Frazier at mfrazier@umcmission.org or call 212 870-3659.

{Guest Blogger} Malinda Nichols of UMVIM, SEJ

Zack and Malinda Nichols, CRMP 2012

When my husband became the director of our church’s youth ministry in 2009, we had some big plans. (I say “we” because anyone married to someone in ministry knows that when your spouse is the pastor of anything, you’re right there with ‘em.) We wanted to have an awesome back-to-school outreach event each September. We wanted to play the “dumb youth group games” that we loved so much from our high school days. We wanted to create a safe place for the 7th-12th graders in our community to hear the Gospel and know they are cared about and prayed for. But one thing that was particularly strong in our hearts was to give our students the opportunity to go on mission journeys. We came up with a structure of rotating through local, regional, and international service so every student had the chance to engage in each type of mission at least twice while in the ministry, our prayer being that it will help them understand the community, country, and world where they live and spark a desire to be. To go. (Why do we say "journey" and not "trip" by the way? Because a trip is one week. A journey encompasses the process before, during, and after you travel.)

Years before joining the UMVIM staff, I went through UMVIM team leader training and started to learn the difference between a “service project” and true, sustainable missions. We had some growing pains in those early years, engaging a couple times in projects that didn’t seem to have the healthy mission model we wanted our students to see and understand. It’s not about parachuting in with Chacos on our feet and fixing other people's problems, then kicking back in the Eno and congratulating ourselves on a job well done. Not even kinda. I’ll never forget the mission where we worked all week on a house while the homeowners sat there and watched us and never took any action to be part of the repairs themselves, though they were perfectly able to do so. No bueno.  

We decided our youth’s first international mission journey (and our church’s first international mission journey at that) would be to Costa Rica to serve with Wil Bailey and Costa Rica Mission Projects, and it was a game-changer for the way we saw and understood Christian mission.

I hope you’ll take the time to click over the CRMP’s website and learn more about them and what they do. In short, Wil and his wife Yolanda have been serving communities in the Zona Sur for more than a decade, building whatever these congregations need to thrive, and helping meet the needs the people convey they have. Furthermore, they make sure that the congregations are part of these building projects, giving them pride and ownership over them. My team from Church at Cahaba Bend, and the hundreds of teams before and after us, are brought in to be the church right alongside them, and give a helping hand to see these projects to completion. There is this misconception sometimes that we are "bringing Jesus" to these other parts of the world. Do I even have to say this?...Jesus is THERE already. 

Additionally, Wil and the CRMP employees raise funds and hop on a plane every chance they get to come Stateside and serve here in America. In fact, the first time I met Wil, Hugo, Hugito, Catalina, Pedro, and Pastor William, they were here in Alabama after a series of tornadoes left more damage than a single community could manage alone. Healthy mission model? They’re doing it right.

Catalina and me in 2012 and 2015, so grateful for this wonderful friend!

Our most recent trip to the Zona Sur, in June of this year, had us working at the CRMP Missions & Ministry Center, a walled complex that serves a variety of needs. It’s the home base for visiting UMVIM teams, and I’ll tell you from personal experience that the food is great, the beds are comfy, and the showers are hot. Does the local pastor's wife make fresh donuts for you? Yeah, she does. Did I gain 4 pounds while we were there? Yeah, I did.

Our 2015 Team

But the M&MC is providing so much more: we spent the week floating concrete in apartments where missionaries can live while going through cultural training. We water-sealed doors on a house where women from more remote parts of Costa Rica can stay while they find employment and provide for their families. There’s a childcare center being built where sweet kiddos can be in a safe, nurturing environment while their parents work.

Additionally, and even more importantly, we had the opportunity break bread with the people around us, go to church with them, pray with them, sing songs with their children, eat meals with them, and take communion with our brothers and sisters. CRMP emphasizes relationship-building, and being in a covenant partnership with them means that we are working on relationships with the people of the Zona Sur alongside Wil and the CRMP staff. They are always on our hearts and in our prayers, and our commitment is there beyond the weeks when we have a team physically in Costa Rica.  

Adding "Can sing Father Abraham in two languages" to our resumés.

 

Our students, they make me proud, and can clap cheer with the best of them.

Our church drummer Taylor, my husband Zack, and Wil during Sunday worship.

Final worship service with Wil, the CRMP staff, and all of the volunteers for the week.

A church trip in the 9th grade is what made me love mission service, but UMVIM Team Leader Training is what sparked my passion for effective Christian service. I had this great job in magazine publishing once upon a time, but what I do now spreads so far and means so much than my previous career ever did. Our staff is small, but it is dedicated. We are here to help every team leader know how to lead their teams on spiritual, practical, and relational levels. We also are happy to walk volunteers through their Missioner Profiles, brainstorm with you on what kind of Mission Opportunity is best for your church, and more. We are passionate about equipping others and are here to serve you...so you can be a servant!  

Malinda Nichols runs Communications for UMVIM, SEJ. Holler at her here if she can help you get more team members for your next mission journey, or if you need a good recipe for strawberry cupcakes.