Lipscomb sends 500 around globe on Spring Break missions
Janel Shoun |
As college students all over the nation grab their six-packs and sunscreen to prepare for spring break, Lipscomb University’s students, staff and friends are instead packing their Bibles, hammers and work clothes as they embark on 25 mission trips around the globe.
Lipscomb bid Godspeed to around 500 people at a special praise and prayer service on Monday, March 12, in Shamblin Theatre.
Following a tradition that has grown each year over the past decade, Lipscomb University will launch a record number of mission trips during spring break week, March 19-23. Lipscomb’s mission trips are largely coordinated and carried out by students, some of whom spend up to a year in advance working out the logistics.
“These mission opportunities allow our students a chance to put their faith into action,” said Mark Jent, coordinator of missions development. “Their hard work brings transforming life changes through the relationships they build in these places. We consider ourselves fortunate to have a generation of students before us that make serving others and glorifying God a priority in their lives.”
Two new mission trips have been added this year – one to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and one right here in Nashville, where team members will re-roof and repaint a home for a local family in need.
Other students will head to far-flung locations such as the French West Indies, El Salvador and the United Kingdom, while others will stick close to home at Jellico, Tenn., Atlanta, or Robbins, Tenn., in the Appalachian Mountains.
The following is a list of all the mission trips planned for March 19-23:
This group will visit kids at the Boys & Girls Club in the inner city and pass out clothes in the housing communities.
This group will offer community support through food relief, building houses and holding classes for children, teens and adults.
The group will conduct a VBS, do work projects and spend time playing with and loving the kids at the City of Children orphanage.
The group will serve through manual labor projects, local outreach in the community, classes for the children and playing with the children at Ciudad of Angelschildren’s home.
This group will help build and repair houses in the Appalachian Mountains.
This group will assist the Iglesia de Cristo de Santa Eduviges by evangelizing in the nearby communities, providing food relief and medical supplies, teaching classes and visiting with the members of the local church.
This group will work by ministering to the Quiche Indians and conducting daily medical clinics in rural villages.
This group will evangelize by attending to medical, physical and spiritual needs.
The members of this group will focus on evangelism through nightly street meetings and showing the natives Christ through their every action.
This group will do everything from physical labor such as construction work to simply befriending a group of kids in town to get them involved with the church.
This group will focus on serving the homeless community and working with elderly individuals and neglected children.
Seven groups of 10 participants each will travel to various cities in the UK, where the main focus will be reaching out to teenagers, but may involve everything from picking up trash in the local streets to visiting the elderly or singing at nursing homes
Nashville, Tenn.
Working in conjunction with the Christian organization Reconstruct, students will work to clean up and fix up homes of deserving families in the Nashville area.
This group endeavors to bring hope to the people of New Orleans through physical labor and encouraging words.
This group will work with Camp Shiloh and the Manhattan Church of Christ to tutor elementary school students one-on-one within the New York City public schools.
This group will spend the week reaching out to students who have chosen to take the broad path. They strive to be a light in the darkness that is often associated with spring break.
This group will be doing manual labor projects, after-school activities with children, spending time in the Aged Home, tutoring children in the elementary school and having devotionals with teenagers.
This group will hold a gospel meeting each evening with children's classes and conduct various service projects such as light repairs and painting at churches and homes, visiting the elderly and cleaning up the beach
They will organize Bible studies, gospel meetings and a VBS and conduct a service project in the Chinatown district.