I have found a very important question to ask oneself when going on and then being on a missions trip is, “Why are you here?” (I know that’s a question my kids also asked of me whenever I ended up going on one of their mission trips!)
The way I view this is that with just a few exceptions the key thing to be remembering as an adult volunteer is that while you may be one of not very many adults, and, as now in my case, you may be quite or even a lot older than your youth ministry staff, you are there as a VOLUNTEER. This means letting your youth ministry staff lead with you providing support, backup, etc. It also may include some mentoring (if your staff is open to this) and lots of support. Humor is also generally helpful.
A second thing to remember is that this is a YOUTH missions trip. For me this means not doing things youth can (and maybe should be but are not yet) doing. I thus try to be more of a manager when out on work sites, supporting what’s going on, identifying youth who look like they need something to do (or at times putting an end to things they may be doing that they shouldn’t). Since ensuring the safety of your youth is a big part of why you’re along, you should be thinking of this as much as possible. For example, on one of my trips I had a youth in my small group who was very allergic to a certain type of food (as in start with the epi shot). My job was to carry the epi pen and use it as necessary. I realized after the fact, though, that while we had played bingo with the residents of a Nursing Home in their dining room after lunch, I had not checked before hand to see what the residents had eaten for lunch? So I find it’s something I need to be constantly working on remembering.
A third thing to remember is that you’re an ADULT along on the trip. This means acting like one. As in not getting drunk or bouncing kids off their sleeping mattresses into walls, not slamming on the brakes of the van you’re driving and yelling out “Seatbelt check!” when it’s full of kids. Not making passes at the staff or being the biggest problem the staff has to deal with the week you’re at their site. Not ditching the kids, even leaving the site for extended periods of time. All things I have either seen or our youth have told me about after the fact. What you should be doing is ensuring the safety of your youth, talking with staff as necessary if needed. Also ensuring there’s more than enough to eat (as in going out to buy some more bread, cereal, etc. if not). In my case it means drinking my coffee in the morning to make sure I’m awake by the time I’m needed.
A final thing to remember is that this is a MISSIONS trip. As in one of the things everyone should be working on before, during and after the trip is why do we do this? (the good Lord calls us to) How do we do it well? (a lot harder than many people assume which many “missions” trips are at best a waste of up to a lot of money and at worst, cause more harm than good) I clearly remember the director of a Lutheran camp our church’s kids go to talking with our Senior Pastor, asking him how the camp could be supportive to our congregation? Our pastor’s answer was short and simple but also profound: “Work on faith development of our kids.” Amen to that.
One of my realities is I was blessed to grow up in a land far, far away from that of my parents, a very, very long ways from
where I now live in St. Paul, MN (back in the land of my parents), a land which oh so slowly has again become my own. It just happened naturally as my parents became Lutheran missionary school teachers to Madagascar when I was going into 3rd grade. From then till I graduated from high school, with the exception of 8th grade back here in Minnesota (Minneapolis), I grew up as an MK in the little, but oh so complicated town (I’ve found out later in life) of what was then called Fort Dauphin (now called Tolagnaro, Tolanaro or even Faradofay) on the coast of southeastern Madagascar. An absolutely gorgeous place on the Indian Ocean, with, in our case, ocean on 3.5 sides of us, white sand beaches for hundreds of miles whether you went west or north, hills to the northwest, rain forests 10 miles north of us, a semi-desert about 50 miles to the west and the list goes on. I have described it as Oahu about 200 years ago (without very many people and very little pavement, no skyscrapers, hotels, etc.) or Fantasy Island without all that fantasy (though we did have “the plane! the plane!” which was a DC-3 when I got there back in the mid 1960’s and was a 737 by the time I graduated from the American School in the mid 1970’s).
So being true to my word and my eclecticity (pretty sure that’s not a word), this MK/AMK theme is another of the “streams” flowing through this “land” of my blog. This, too, shall be continued.
[the picture is of my family at the airport “terminal” in Fort Dauphin in 1971 on our way back to the US after our first 5-year term. i would be the one in the red shirt]
Last Friday I returned from what must now be about 10 summer missions trips with our church’s youth. This most recent one was a week with YouthWorks in Duluth (second time there). I’ve also been to Wyoming (Wind River), Chicago (twice) and Queens, NY with this organization. In addition I’ve been on a trip to eastern Kentucky with Habitat, far south Chicago with a local nonprofit, 
western South Dakota with the Atlantic Mountain Lutheran Bible Camp and twice down to Juarez, Mexico, the first time with a Lutheran Bible Camp from Colorado that shall remain nameless (as I’ll share later, their staff did a very poor, even dangerous job leading this trip), the second time on our own, though both times working for a small missions effort there that built houses. All but the two trips to Duluth has been with our high school kids, though there were high school kids there from several other churches that we worked with last week. All but the trips to Juarez have been done here in the US and, while Juarez is another world, we were never more than about 10 miles from El Paso during our visits there.
While I’ve never been overseas for a YMT, I grew up as a missionary kid in Madagascar for 10 years where my wife and I then also later worked for another 10 years. So that experience informs a lot of how I approach these trips and is one of the reasons why I enjoy going with our church’s youth, as it brings back memories, most of them good, though some not so much.
What I’m going to do in a series of blogs under this category is share some of my reflections on these experiences. If you can add to my wisdom, please do so. If you can benefit from it, that is fine as well.
It feels just a bit ironic for me to be starting a blog, as I’ve carefully limited most of my encounter with the written word since completing my dissertation now a long time ago (how can it possibly be 22 yrs?!) to reading and, in my teaching, editing other people’s writing. But maybe all of that time was my writing internship! At any rate, life is such that I feel like trying out this experience.
What will this blog read like? Well, in spite of all my formal education which is so carefully aimed at forcing one to specialize with an ever tighter focus, I remain eclectic. So get ready for the appearance of a lot of subjects [that blogs are good as a place for lots of subjects, I think (we’ll see) is actually one of the reasons working on a blog is of interest to me at this point in time].
So fasten your seat belts, as I’m thinking while this may be a bit of a bumpy ride, it hopefully won’t be boring!
Cheers! Tom
tomberkas 