Global Outreach gives students the opportunity to travel every summer on mission trips and internships.
Senior Cina Catteau got involved in Global Outreach last fall when she started thinking about going on a missions internship. Catteau said Global Outreach guided the students the whole way as they raised funds, formed teams and prepared for a very different cultural experience.
Catteau said the students had retreats where they formed their teams, chose their destinations, engaged in team building exercises and spent a weekend at HUT preparing for a new cultural experience. Catteau said she would have never had the experience she had last summer in India without the Global Outreach program organizing the trip.
“It’s so great for students considering missions to have people who have done this before and are committed to helping you at every step of the process,” Catteau said. “The internship really gave me insight into long-term mission work and has made it seem like something much more real and doable. I hope that the people in India were blessed by our presence there, and I was definitely blessed by it.”
Junior Cierra Boehmler said the teams do a lot during the semester to prepare for the mission trips. They have meetings to discuss fundraising, safety while traveling and what to expect on their trips. Boehmler is going on her first internship this summer to Mtwara, Tanzania. The teams have already had a retreat this semester. They went over trip details and their results from a personality profile test each intern took earlier in the month called DISC, which determined each person’s personality type, strengths and weaknesses, Boehmler said.
“We discussed in our teams what each of our profile’s results were and how we could work together and work through differences based on how we naturally respond to different situations,” Boehmler said. “I think doing that was really beneficial and will help each team in the long run.”
Boehmler said students should get involved with Global Outreach because it is an opportunity to experience the day-to-day life of a missionary. She said everyone should be available to reach out to people who have not heard about the gospel, whether it is domestic or international.
“Everyone has a place in God’s mission,” Boehmler said. “We as college students are at a place in our lives where we are trying to figure out who we are, what we want to do with our lives and who we want to become. I feel like getting involved in Global Outreach is a great place to start in finding what our place in (God’s) mission looks like.”
Students can go to the Global Missions Office in the McInteer to learn more about how to get involved in Global Outreach and summer internships.
“If you want to do missions, but it seems like some impossible task, one of these trips is a great place to start,” Catteau said. “Whether a short-term trip or an internship, I think it’s a great idea for anyone to have the experience of serving God in a different culture.”
