Summer is the perfect time to binge-watch Netflix, sleep until 2 p.m. and mindlessly scroll through social media while hanging upside down off of the couch. Summer is also the perfect time to travel across the globe, experience new cultures and live with missionaries while learning about different worldviews.
Global Outreach (GO!), a summer internship program housed in the Center for World Missions, provides opportunities for students to learn about and experience long-term mission work first hand.
“The purpose of the Global Outreach internship is to give students more than just the short term,” Danita Jackson, a coordinator for GO!, said. “The internship gives them an opportunity to have a little more of a taste of what it’s like to live in a different culture long-term.”
Forty-eight students went to 18 different sites this past summer.
One of those 48 was junior Jessica Markwood, who lived in Mtwara, Tanzania. Markwood said she was interested in learning how the missionaries lived, worked and shared Christ appropriately in a largely Muslim culture.
“The internship is a little different from a mission trip,” Markwood said. “A mission trip is more activities oriented, and the internship is basically following the missionaries around and doing whatever they do. A lot of days were just going to the market and making everything from scratch. We had a lot of days where we would do Bible studies with people, and once we went on a hippo tour as means of tourism development in the area.”
Markwood said that as she followed the missionaries through their everyday lives, she learned the importance of living simply and building genuine relationships with the people of Mtwara.
“(The missionaries) go out of their way to build relationships and not just view people as a project,” Markwood said. “They have genuine friendships that hopefully will lead people to Christ, but the focus isn’t all about changing them. It’s about learning from them and working alongside them.”
Senior Gehrig Haberstock also chose to spend his summer on a GO! internship and lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Haberstock said he was sitting in chapel one day when he heard an announcement about summer internships and decided to go check it out.
Along with experiencing the day-to-day lives of the missionaries, Haberstock and his fellow intern were in charge of helping the church establish a youth group.
“We never had really big turnouts to the events, which was challenging because you want more people to come, but since it started small you can form relationships with those people,” Haberstock said. “So in it being a challenge it was also a blessing.”
As the summer progressed Haberstock built strong bonds with the missionaries he lived with.
“There was one guy named Stefan and he had the biggest impact on me while I was there,” Haberstock said. “He doesn’t claim to have great Bible knowledge, but the things he has done for his faith were the most impactful for me. Like, he quit his job because of the poisonous environment. He did tangible things for his faith. Very clear, evident things that everybody could see, but I don’t know if everyone realized it. I want to be like that when I grow up.”
Students who are interested in participating in a GO! summer internship are encouraged to make an appointment with Jackson to get more information. Online registration will begin Sept. 17 and will close Oct. 31.
