by Leah Raich | May 29, 2012 | News Slider
With final exams now nearly one month in the rearview mirror, Lipscomb students have turned their focus to their next objective – serving Christ across the globe this summer. Over the course of 106 days, from May 4 through Aug. 17, Lipscomb Missions will have 24 teams on the ground in 18 different countries. The timeframe is broad in scope – all summer long – and so are the locations and types of services being offered. From discipline-specific trips in Engineering that will be serving communities in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic to a first year trip to Moldova where a team of graduate psychology students will be providing therapeutic counseling to girls once caught in human trafficking, some students have the opportunity to take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it in a mission field. Students will experience a variety of cultures, from the two trips to Australia (Brisbane and Perth) where students will engage growing churches and encourage youth, to two trips in India where Lipscomb teams will spend five weeks in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta ministering in a country where Christians are the minority. In each of these missions, students will have the unique chance to literally “go into all the world,” as Jesus directs his followers in Mark 16:15. This year’s 24 summer trips are a record for Lipscomb Missions, up from 20 trips in 2011 and just eight trips three years ago in 2009. There has been a significant shift in the landscape of the Missions Program as the number of trips offered has flipped from being heavily weighted on spring break efforts to the current majority of summer trips leading...
by Kathryn Claire Watts | Oct 10, 2011 | News Slider
The 2011 fall missions fair went off without a hitch last week. Trips around the world were represented in the student center on Tuesday, with many team leaders from each trip there to speak to students. “The missions fair is a very important event for our trip,” said Northern Ireland leader John Williams. “It is a chance for us to talk to nearly 100 students about what we do and why we are so excited about going to Northern Ireland year after year.” The fair also had many new trips added to the selection. Daley Hilburn, event and student work coordinator for the office of admissions, is organizing a trip to her hometown of Patterson, Calif. “The missions fair was a great success,” said Hilburn. “I was a little apprehensive at first as to how my trip would be received as it is a very small, grass-roots type of trip to the middle-of-nowhere, California. But everyone I spoke with really liked the idea. I’m so excited to see what God has planned for this trip!” The next step in the missions process is to attend an interest meeting. The meetings will be held from now until Oct. 30. For this week’s meetings, click on the schedule to the right. The missions department will host a commitment week from Oct. 31 to Nov. 4, when future participants commit to their particular trip. There are tons of trips to choose from, so make sure you take the time to learn about which one is right for you! For more information, visit the mission department...
by Lacy Pack | Jun 16, 2011 | News Slider
Sometimes it is the smallest decisions that can change your life forever. For Camille Santos and Rainey Lankford, choosing to spend two weeks in Ghana, West Africa has done just that. Camille Santos, a senior nursing major from Memphis, Tenn. says that Lipscomb’s summer mission trip to Ghana has opened her eyes in many ways. “This might sound sad, but I’ve been on mission trips before and I feel like I never actually got anything from it,” Santos said. “But even on the first day there I felt completely compelled… you do change as a person. I feel 100 percent myself when I’m there. No makeup. No shower. It doesn’t matter because the kids are the focus.” Santos is one of the students that returned from Ghana last week. Lipscomb works with an orphanage called the Village of Hope, which is home to around 200 children. The children are brought to the orphanage from off the streets, abusive or dangerous living conditions and even rescued from child slavery. Santos explained that the children live in homes overseen by couples who devote their lives to raising these children as their own. The orphanage consists of a medical clinic, dental clinic, Hope Christian Academy (a school of 600-700 students), the Village of Hope Church of Christ, staff houses and guest houses. Santos reminisced with a smile about the confusion she caused at the beginning of the trip. Santos is biracial and has several piercings. In Ghanaian culture, people are either white or black and facial piercings are not common. She gained the nickname,“The Black American,” but Santos wasn’t the only one...
by Anna Waites | Mar 28, 2011 | Uncategorized
I was so tired from not having slept nearly at all on Friday night. I had packed, done laundry and finished my last minute shopping with little time left to sleep before time to meet up with the team at 3 a.m. Saturday March 12 Once we got to school to ride the bus out to the airport, my tired eyes weren’t even a concern because I was so excited to be with my team, ready to go for the week. We prayed together over our trip and all of the other groups leaving from Lipscomb to serve God’s grand kingdom in the world. After several hours in airports and on airplanes, we arrived at the Casa Mirage where the girls from the team stayed for the week. I was incredibly excited to get to Cozumel. Being back there after a year was such an incredible feeling; I loved smelling the smells and feeling the breeze that I hadn’t felt since last spring break. Saturday night, we went to the campus of Ciudad de Ángeles and served dinner and smores to the “angels” and the staff there. I was pretty nervous because I didn’t know if any of the kids would remember me from last year. I don’t know why I worried so much. Even though some of them didn’t recognize me at first, the girl that my family sponsors was waiting to greet me with a hug. I also met a boy who had just moved to Ciudad last year. It is amazing to see how God is blessing Ciudad de Ángeles daily. Last year, 8 new angels...
by Cooper McCullough | May 24, 2010 | News Slider
No day is normal in New York City. How could that even be possible in a city where every street corner buzzes with a multiplicity of languages? When one hour you’re serving food to a homeless family at church and the next you’re observing a Picasso at the Guggenheim? When you’re sitting in the room with heroin addicts & heroin-addicts-turned-pastors? New York is a startling juxtaposition of the best and the worst in America, with its fair share of pleasure… and pain. Monday was our first day to work in PS 179 in the Bronx. As the members of our mission trip left to find their classrooms in the public elementary school for the week, our contact pulled me aside. She apologized, but said that she had decided to pair me with one of the roughest classes in the school. I was to help a second-grade classroom, room 405, with its population of kids with learning challenges and a penchant for violence. While the day started out pleasantly enough, it began to disintegrate after lunchtime. All the physical violence, financial instability, and emotional insecurity in these kids’ lives began to make itself evident. But these problems compared with the apparent attitudes of the teachers. While some really tough things happened in class today, I will sum up the whole day by describing gym at the end of the day. As soon as our ragged class had made it down to the gym, the regular teachers quickly ran upstairs, leaving the class to the substitute gym teacher and me. We began gym by racing from one side to the other, but the sub sat down after a...
