Spring Break Mission Trips Branch Out
Across the Globe

For many years Spring Break mission trips by Western Baptist students meant traveling to one location—Mexico. After months of prayer, fundraising and planning, more than 75 students have traveled to four distant locations for outreach ministry during Spring Break 2005.

The first group to leave, March 17, included nine students serving in Italy as part of Saints Equipped to Evangelize (SEE). The students will travel to a small village near Venice where they will be performing street mime and handing out Christian tracts. One student on that team once lived near Naples where her family helped plant a church. Freshman Mandy Peterson says she and the SEE team have been preparing six different mimes to present to Italians who will gather to watch them through March 27.

Through prayer Peterson feels God will allow them to be flexible and patient so He may better work through them.

“We’ll have interpreters to help tell stories which center around salvation and God’s truth,” she says. “This is a very ritualistic Catholic dominated society. It can be a dark country culturally at times with crime and little respect for certain values that we share, so this is a great challenge.”

Three families in a small town near Tijuana, Mexico will have three new small homes built for them during the Break with the help of 43 WB students. Student coordinator Joe Mogford says many new faces will make the 18-hour trip south of the border.

“Building homes and entertaining the children there with puppets and games is equally as important as serving them and their families. We want to give hope to the poor people living there. Our group is excited.,” Mogford says.

Campus Pastor, Dr. Kent Kersey and student Kyle Archibald are leading 11 other students on a mission’s trip to universities and churches during an outreach trip to Utah. In cooperation with Russ East of the Utah Partnership For Christ (UPFC), the group will be evangelizing students at BYU, Weber State University, and other Utah localities.

A fourth missions group with 15 students will travel to inner-city Los Angeles, many for the second time, to work with and minister to troubled youth in that area.