Good morning, all.

I greet you from the slightly less frozen tundra that is Minnesota. At the moment, we are at a balmy thirty-one degrees.

So, I decided that this year would be an excellent year to go on a short term missions trip. I want to leave the US and serve in the name of Jesus for a period of 5-10 days. I looked at a few places yesterday but didn't find anything that really caught my attention. I will check with YWAM's website later today and see if they have something that would fit.

I used to disagree with overseas short-term missions on principle. I thought, Why should someone pay buku-bucks to go somewhere and donate time and skill in another COUNTRY when they could donate that money to somewhere local and serve in their own COUNTY?? When my youth group would plan a missions trip I didn't ever go. Well, I have learned since then that I had an inaccurate understanding of the point of short-term missions. The point of short-term overseas missions is not to build a house or play with orphans, necessarily. Probably the greatest thing that is accomplished by these brief trips is the change that happens in the hearts and minds of those who take them. When you see how someone eles lives and works and you see the faith of someone very different, yet not so different from yourself, your own faith is changed. Your faith and your worldview grow into something they may not have ever become if you had remained at home, in your own world.

I haven't figured it all out though...what do you all think of this??