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 Aaron Schmelzer | Jan 13, 2011 | Opinion
I like to catch up with friends at the end of the Christmas holidays. I often ask them, “What did you do over the holidays? ” With that question, my friends most often respond with the same answer. “Nothing much. Just spent time with family, you know.” They then follow up with the same question I asked them. I respond by telling them: “You know, I did the same thing. Oh, but I did do something a little different this year. I went to Peru on a mission trip.” I had been to Peru before– last June on vacation with a fellow Lipscomb student and great friend Joel Collao, who is also from Peru. I was privileged to be able to return on January 2nd with a group from Lipscomb on a mission trip to Lima, the capital of Peru that I had visited before. While the heart of Lima, the Plaza de Armas, retains its colonial architecture and is quite beautiful, outside of the colonial center is also outside “tourist country.” However, outside is where the real heart and culture of Lima lie. That is from where the real Peruvians come, but the real Peruvians are also often the people that need the most help both spiritually and physically. We went to Lima to create a VBS for the children and families that attend or live near the Iglesia de Cristo de Lucyana (Lucyana Church of Christ). Several members of the church welcomed our arrival with a large homemade sign and songs. The same members helped us throughout the week in breaking through the language and culture barriers....
