Every year, Ouachita’s Campus Ministries (CM) holds several mission trips for students to participate in. Past CM mission trips have involved travelling to places like California, New Orleans, New York, South Africa, Chile, and Indonesia. In 2016, CM will be taking students to California and East Asia.
“The CM trips are a great opportunity to serve with fellow students and to use your break for something more than relaxing or vacationing,” James Taylor, director of CM, said. “They’re also a great way to learn about how God is working in different cultures.”
The upcoming California trip will take place over spring break. This will be the fourth year CM has taken students to Anaheim, California. During the trip, a group of about 15 students volunteer with an organization known as Voice of Refugees (VOR). The refugees VOR serves are mainly from North Africa and the Middle East.
VOR provides a variety of services to refugees to help them to settle into their lives in America. The organization also offers English classes taught by volunteers. Participants of the CM mission trip usually take over these English classes during their week in California to give the volunteer teachers a break. In addition, the mission trip participants have the opportunity to spend time with the refugees in their homes.
“The people are so hospitable,” Anna Kumpuris, senior mass communications, Christian Studies and Spanish major from Little Rock, Arkansas, said. “We’d go over to their houses to bring them some groceries and they’d invite us in for tea. It gave us the chance to talk to them and pray with them, and that was really neat.”
In the summer of 2016, CM will be taking a three-week mission trip to East Asia. During this trip, students will primarily work in a university context, learning about Asian culture as well as helping others to learn English. At the same time, students will be able to build relationships and learn how to best serve others in a different culture in the name of Jesus.
“If you’re even considering the idea of going on a CM mission trip, then I would tell you to go,” Cimber Winfrey, junior business and mass communications major from Little Rock, Arkansas, and a participant on the CM South Africa mission trip, said. “Going to South Africa with CM was one of the best experiences of my life. I wasn’t expecting how much I’d be ministered to on the trip, and it was a huge growing experience for me spiritually.”
CM mission trip teams usually meet for weekly training in preparation for a trip. CM also offers a few scholarships for mission trip participants and provides students with help fund-raising for the trips if necessary.
“I applied for my first California trip on a whim and it totally changed my life,” Kumpuris said. “It’s one of my favorite mission experiences ever. It’s something affordable and fun you can do on your spring break, and you get to meet other Ouachita students you may never have met otherwise.”
Applications for the East Asia mission trip next summer are open until December 11. Contact James Taylor at taylorja@obu.edu for more information.
By Kimberly Wong
