SHEENA De WALL | arts & culture editor

‘Tis the season -- for summer mission trip selection. Soon the process of writing support letters and raising thousands of dollars will be under way so APU students can travel to a different state or country and serve for a few weeks.

Have you ever sat down to think about the amount of money that each person on a missions team needs in order to participate in service to God?

A majority of the trips for this upcoming summer are for overseas locales, so it is safe to say that each student needs to raise at least $1500-$3000 dollars. Per person! Of course, airfare is a large chunk of this amount, plus room and board coupled with on location transportation.

The international experiences that I have had were wonderful, but it wasn’t until I almost decided to return to India for a second trip that I realized the weight of the money I would have to raise. This is when it hit me. I was raising this money so that I could go to another place and try to be of some assistance for a few weeks only to realize that the people there were to be of more assistance to me than I could have ever imagined.

But what if a new sort of short term mission evolved? What if a team was constructed for the support of an organization or group or orphanage in the country of choice. This would mean that the team of APU students would be assembled and write support letters and meet with each other throughout the spring semester, but instead of being used to actually go to the country – the money raised would be sent to support the chosen cause. The time spent in spring would then be dedicated to prayer for that cause and would be dedicated to the community that emerges out of that.

Let’s assume that there are 20 people on a short-term team and each person needs to raise $2000. If the trip was converted to this new trip idea, that would be $40,000 that could be sent to aid whatever cause or group, country or organization the group decided on!

20 teams of 20 people acting on this new idea would be a potential $800,000 to aid the needs of causes around the country and the world. Maybe this idea could be on a bi-yearly timetable so that the experience is intermingled with the tangible needs met.

Think about the money you are raising if you are ever chosen to embark on a short-term mission trip. How much of that money is really going to aid the people you are reaching out to and how much is going to you being able to have an experience of reaching out to people.