By Mo Scarpelli

Twins Arnet and Noel Le used to see their friend Trizznie Van every day in the neighborhood. He remembers her watching them play basketball, he remembers her playing Uno and checkers, and he remembers her sitting out on the steps leading up to his apartment building.

Two years ago, though, he formed a memory he wishes never happened – he saw her body wheeled away from her house in a body bag.

“It really shocked me,” said 16-year-old Arnet Le, who glimpsed Trizznie’s feet as she was taken out of her house a final time by the paramedics. “She’d talk about wanting to kill herself when she was angry, but I didn’t think she had the guts to really do it.”

Not more than a week after graduating from Gideons Elementary, the 14-year-old girl allegedly rigged two belts to a closet rod in her room in Capital View Apartments and hung herself.
The tragedy barely made the newspaper in a city of more than half a million people, especially coming from the Pittsburgh Community, a neighborhood where residents hear gunshots several nights a week.
But it devastated a core of people in the local neighborhood, too – the Salvation Army Lakewood Corps, to be precise.

“For her to turn up dead really shocked us into action,” said Captain Platt, director of the Lakewood Corps. “After Trizznie was buried, it really began to affect us that she was one of our kids. We decided we didn’t want to do outreach for outreach’s sake there – she gave us focus and mission for the kids.”
Captain Platt remembers first hearing the news. He grabbed a one of his cadets and drove to CVA, an area visited every so often by the Corps.

Platt, whose own daughter is only a couple of days from Trizzie’s age, shakenly walked up to the young girl’s house, ready to console and assist her family and neighbors.

“Some of the kids were outside talking, just hours after it happened,” Platt said. “And I realized, here I am trying to compose myself and these kids standing outside are already in the gossiping.”

To Platt, the scene was a clear example of how at-risk youth develop a defense mode that’s hard to break down.

“One of the chief survival mechanisms is knowing how to shut down any sense of pain,” said Platt. “It cripples you if you empathize or sympathize with all the pain you see here because you’ll see so much of it that you wouldn’t be able to function.”

Platt realized then the need for the Corps’ presence at CVA, where children may lose a sense of compassion amid violence and pain.

But the Corps as a whole realized the need for South Atlanta at-risk youth in general.

Captain Platt and a Lakewood Soldier, Jason Pope, approached CVA owner ** Leathers about creating a time and place to spend with the complex’s kids. He excitedly showed them a furnished basement already complete with books, games and a television. The area had been previously used for summer camp, adult English as a Second Language classes, and several other events during the year.
In just three months, the Lakewood Corps set up a full program with a Bible study, crafts, and free time with the kids.

Children’s ministry didn’t stop where Trizznie used to live, though.

Once the CVA program was up and running, Platt turned to another area the Corps visited often, but hadn’t quite dived into fully.

“My wife and I had been riding by Jonesboro [Colony Park] for three years and every time we did, we’d point to the community and say, ‘We need to be here,’” said Platt.

The Colony Park trailer park sits on Jonesboro road, across from a rundown liquor store and a welding factory. Most of the about 500 residents are Latino, and few adults speak fluid English.
Almost all the trailers in the park house at least three children. On sunny days, some come out to play on streets ridden with broken beer bottles and trash.

Platt and Pope wanted to form a constant presence in Jonesboro, but they lacked resources and helpers to show up four afternoons a week.

That’s when 24-year-old Daynas Viera, a recent graduate from Taccoa Falls College, found Captain Platt. She told him she felt called to minister specifically in Lakewood.

“It would scare the paints off some people to come here and minister permanently,” said Platt. “But Daynas did it. And as a Spanish-speaker, with her heart for kids, she was a perfect fit for Jonesboro.”
Daynas asked Platt what she could help with and his reply was, “Make friends.” After a Three Kings Day celebration for Colony Park families in January, that’s exactly what she and several other Salvation Army volunteers did in Jonesboro.

Now, more than thirty Jonesboro kids show up for the day’s activities.
Experience Mission volunteers also chip in each day for the summer. They lead games, scribble chalk drawings, and role-play Bible stories for the kids, but more importantly, they just maintain a positive presence for the Salvation Army.

“Trust is the most expensive commodity,” said Platt. “You could give Christmas dinners to a whole community, but that wouldn’t gain the trust. You need to have faithful accountability, people need to see you from time to time.”

Experience Intern Matt Crouch knows this – the first several weeks he spent in Jonesboro, some mothers would hardly crack their doors open for him when he asked if their kids would come out and play.

Now, after six weeks, mothers chat and joke with him in Spanish and then smile as he walks away, hand in tiny hand with their young ones, to where the Salvation Army hold activities.

“The parents have been burned a little more,” said Platt. “They hold their cards a little closer. If you lived in a jungle, you’d be suspicious of every little thing you saw, heard, or ate. When the Salvation Army shows up, what they really want to know is, ‘Are these people my friends?’”
Gregoria Sanchez, a 28-year-old mother of three, has been living in Colony Park for four years and speaks almost no English. She usually sticks around the house, but she is grateful that her kids don’t have to anymore.

“If they didn’t come, the kids would not go out, I would keep them here and they would play in a small room,” says Sanchez. “They are excited to go to the activities, and I trust they will stay out of trouble there.”

Sanchez’s main concern is that her kids stay in school. In such a tight-knit community, the children are influenced mostly by the teens around them – and the Salvation Army has noticed that many Colony Park teens drop out.

“If you are well educated, you will stay away from drugs and drinking,” says Sanchez, whose parents attended only primary school in Mexico. “I want my children to be well-educated.”
Platt knows many parents of at-risk youth in South Atlanta like Sanchez that would give anything for their kids to have better, but simply don’t have the resources.

“Every day I see a place where we need to be,” said Platt. “The fields are white, we want to be out there.”

As the Corps tries to maintain a constant presence in both Jonesboro and Pittsburgh, street ministry proves to be hard work for both Salvation Army workers and Experience Mission volunteers alike.

“The important thing to remember is that when Experience Mission partners with us, they become the Salvation Army,” said Captain Platt. “They are the face of the Corps, that’s how the neighborhoods see it. And it’s been a blessing, because we could make a lot of things happen without money, but not without people.”

By Mo Scarpelli

When several men from Woodruff Road Community Church in Greenville, North Carolina arrived at a house in Gary, West Virginia last week to repair a water-damaged room, they expected several days of hard work.

What they didn’t expect were two smiling little girls to keep them company throughout the project.

“We were looking for somewhere to put our nails and Kaleigh brought us a little princess box,” said Todd Gleason, Experience Mission Construction Manager. “She kept coming back in the room and saying, ‘It’s so beautiful, it’s so beautiful,’ even though it was still under construction.”

Kaleigh, 4, and Brooke, 2, live with grandparents Beth and Ronnie several miles from historic downtown Welch, West Virginia.

The family applied to the local nonprofit organization, School for Life, Inc., two years ago for home repair. School for Life, Inc. partners with Experience Mission in home repair projects for those in need.

The small EM team spent last week laying drywall and spackling the cracks of the Finley’s back room, where their granddaughters will have their own rooms, for the very first time.

Beth and Ronnie Finley’s house troubles began in July of 2001, when a great flood struck southern West Virginia, leaving more than 1,500 families without homes.

The Finleys were nearly one of them. Their backyard washed away into the creek behind their house and part of their roof tore off in the relentless wind.

“It pulled apart from the beams and water started getting up under the roof, not just falling on it,” said 45-year-old Beth Finley. “That’s when the ceiling fell down.”

In the seven years since the flood, the Finley’s roof has never completely recovered, despite their best efforts to repair it.

“We bought plywood and rolled roofing (tar paper) and tried to fix it,” said Beth, who has been married to Ronnie Finley for eight years. “It got us through the winter, but started leaking in the spring again.”

After getting off work at the body shop, Ronnie Finley would hoist himself up on top of the house to patch the roof with scrap tin that he’d gotten from a friend. Beth calls it “our flannel shirt roof” because there are so many different colors.

Beth says she didn’t really mind the leaking too much until she adopted her granddaughter, Kaleigh. Ronnie put up a partition to block out the corner of the room where water damage was the worst, and Kaleigh occasionally slept in the front part of the room, though she was more comfortable in her grandparents’ bed.

With Experience Mission’s help, the rooms are now leak-safe, which Beth says is perfect timing for the Finley’s, considering they are in the process of obtaining full parental rights of their second grandchild, Brooke.

Brooke, now 2 years old, was born to a drug-addicted mother and soon after, her father, Beth’s son, was arrested for breaking and entering and sent to jail. Beth and Ronnie Finley have been fighting for custody of their grandchild for more than a year, as she bounced from foster care to her mother’s care to her other grandmother’s care in the meantime.

Beth says with paperwork and court dates out of the way, the family is finally achieving stability. Now that the children have permanent homes, Beth says EM house repair help will have a big impact on the girls’ quality of life.

“The girls are going to have their own rooms for the first time ever,” said Beth Finley. “We’ve been daydreaming – Kaleigh picked out sheets and wallpaper. She goes back there once in awhile to see where she wants to put her bed.”

To Gleason, home repair for the Finley’s wasn’t just about fixing a room. It was also about setting an example to the girls of how faith can lead to compassion and hard work.

“Beth couldn’t express enough how much it meant to her that there were young people interested in doing this work,” said Gleason. “All the young people around here that she knows are into messed up stuff.”

Beth says she often sees crack cocaine and methamphetamine use go undetected by police in her area.

McDowell County has the highest drug-related mortality rate in the state, according to a 2006 report by the West Virginia Prevention Resource Center. More than 30 percent of deaths involve drugs or other abused substances.

Beth worries about this, mostly because she saw her own son fall into a desperate drug addiction. She says five of her neighbors are also grandparents taking care of the children their kids’ couldn’t, due to drug problems.

“It’s real bad here. If they had more people like you –“she said, pointing at EM volunteers as they scraped joint compound on the ceilings, “then they wouldn’t want to get into drugs in the first place.”

The team of five – Earl Nadeau, David Gray, Steve Kinney, Sam Farley, and Gleason – finished in three days, though the rooms still need painting.

Kaleigh Finley says that part is her job.

“I’m going to paint my new room with my daddy and we’re going to make purple butterflies!” said Kaleigh, as she looked around the back corner room she claimed as her own.

EM continues to partner with School for Life, Inc. until the end of July, bringing hundreds more volunteers to assess the needs of McDowell County residents.

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to West Virginia and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call 360-732-0986 to learn more.

By Mo Scarpelli

For many Americans, a heated house is a necessity. If that means installing a new heat pump, so be it. But to those in McDowell County, West Virginia, Jack Fultz says even basic home repair is not a given – it’s a luxury.

More than 24 percent of family households in McDowell County make less than $10,000 a year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“They have no options. Our people have just enough money to get by,” said Fultz, founder of the non-profit group School for Life in Gary, West Virginia. “They have just enough for food, gas, utilities, with no extra money for home repair.”

That explains Carlisa and Donald Merriweather’s story. Four years ago, Carlisa moved into the house her mother had grown up in. Her new home was actually a very old one, dating back to before the 20th century. She never had the option to turn on the heat in her home save for small kerosene heaters in several rooms.

“In the wintertime, Carlisa would come down and stay with us because it was cold,” said Carlisa’s mother, Olivia Bell. “It’s not good when you keep the kerosene on overnight, it’s expensive and you have to watch inhaling the fumes too much.”

The whole neighborhood, known as the Gary No. 11 camp, was built more than a hundred years ago by the U.S. Steel Company for mine workers and their families. The house foundations were constructed with only a couple of feet above the ground, making them too low to install electric heating pumps underneath.

Carl Bell, Carlisa’s father, says the family had two options: they could build an additional room on the house for the heating pump and pipes, or they could hire a contractor and crew to install all of it in the attic.

“If you hire a contractor, you might as well give them the house,” said Bell. “It’s that expensive.”

Bell and a few family members decided to add to the house themselves, but found it hard to acquire the funds and spare time. The new pump alone cost more than $600, and Carlisa’s husband had little time after work to help Bell.

This is where Jack Fultz and his wife, Brenda, came in.

“Carl is one of the first guys I met when we came out here,” said Fultz, who moved into the unused Old Gary School three years ago to start his nonprofit company. “Carl and his brother would help us out at the school, they’d unload trucks and do other things.”

The school’s upstairs classrooms have been converted into living quarters for volunteers that want to help Fultz chip away at a seemingly endless list of residents like the Merriweathers in need of home repair. Experience Mission arrived at the school in early June and their first teams of volunteers, one from Greenville, North Carolina and another from Pennsylvania’s Panther Valley area, found their way through the misty mountains to the school a week later.

The teams then split up to take on different projects: some stayed at the school to teach and play with local children during a bible school program called Kid’s Club; some helped Brenda Fultz sort through cluttered classrooms in the school; and others set off to tackle construction projects. This included a team of five EM volunteers that arrived at Carlisa’s house, eager to finish what her father had started.

“It makes you feel helpful,” said 17-year-old volunteer Brandon Hefferfinger while on a break from laying drywall with his father and friends. “It’s not an off-the-wall, different thing to do, the jobs are very possible for anyone. These people just need help.”

EM has helped, by spending more than $300 on materials and by recruiting volunteers like 18-year-old Joe Folk, who believes that the quality of life for people of West Virginia is just as important as anywhere else.

“We considered going out of the States to do mission work,” said Folk. “But then we decided to help one of our own.”

Merriweather says she is grateful for that, as she was dreading another cold winter with her 7-month-old son. Jack added her house to the his list of repairs almost two years ago, and with the help of EM, finally got enough hands to do the job.

Having EM crews work comforts Merriweather, who says she prefers EM because she can trust the crew.

“You don’t have to worry about ‘em out here fussin’ and cussin’ and fightin’ or taking anything,” Merriweather said. “I was glad when they came, relieved.”

Jack Fultz and EM volunteers try to spread the message of Christianity through
this kind of help all summer long in McDowell County, one of the poorest counties in the country.

“Most Christians just go to church,” said Fultz. “The Bible says, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits,’ and this is just some of the fruit we can provide, by giving time and hard work. Others will notice because these houses beautify the community.”

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to West Virginia and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call  360-732-0986  to learn more.

By Mo Scarpelli

Marsa fell in love when she was fifteen years old.

“He had no goats,” she says. That means the man she loved couldn’t afford to offer her parents a dowry.

So Marsa’s family found her an older man from a different tribe in the Sudan, a man that didn’t speak her language or know her at all prior to their wedding.

“His brothers knew my language and translated,” she said.

Marsa, her new husband, and her brothers came to America in 2000. Pregnant, she soon found out she had syphallis and needed to take a series of shots so that her baby would live.
“If I had not had the shots,” she said, “then my baby would have died.”

But Leno, now 7 years old, survived, and Marsa is thankful for that.

“At first, I get here and I cried every day,” she said. “But I was happy after I had children.”

Marsa has four children, actually. The banging screen door is an indicator of their presence as Marsa explains her story with six-month-old Apik in her lap. Abuk, 5, helps herself to a hotdog for lunch and Nyakajn, 2, lingers around the couch area where her mother sits.

Marsa’s family is one of hundreds living in the Kennedy Park city housing in Portland, Maine. Most of those within blocks of her apartment are Sudanese and Somali refugees, brought into the United States through Catholic Charity sponsorship.

The city has the largest Sudanese immigrant population in the country. Even on rainy days, the neighborhood courses with some of the darkest-skinned people in America.

“But there are many others – over 42 nationalities are represented just in this community,” said Peggy Hinman, volunteer ministry coordinator of the Root Cellar, a community center that aids refugees and immigrants in their transition to American life.

In a brand new world, among new languages and social norms, many immigrants like Marsa crave stability and direction. The Root Cellar tries to provide that in the form of food and clothing donation, education, free dental and medical care and relational ministry.

“We have refugees come straight from the plane to the Root Cellar to get clothing,” said Hinman. “They know us so well. Many refugees went through hard times coming here and they just want to be in a community with peace.”

Experience Mission started working with the Root Cellar just this summer. Interns Noah Nells, Heidi Clum and Cori Lyons are the first to manage EM teams in Portland, where they see building relationships as the most important service for people adjusting to a new culture.

“These kids need people that are genuine to love them,” said 22-year-old volunteer Leah Sherck from Greenville Church of the Bretheren in Greenville, Ohio. “From talking with the kids, you see they’re so distrustful, they’re really looking for someone they can trust. I haven’t been here even a week and I already see a difference with some just from talking to them and remembering their names.”

Marsa’s children, along with more fifty more from the neighborhood, come to the Root Cellar every weekday for Kids Club with Experience Mission. The volunteers’ time with them for several hours a day in a safe place gives them stability, confidence and a chance to relate to others.

“It seems really odd because it’s Maine, it seems to be the middle of nowhere,” said Sherck. “When I think of serving refugees in America, I always think of L.A. or New York City, but there are so many immigrants here. It’s a very unique situation.”

Portland was named a refugee city in the country by Catholic Charities. Through the Charities alone, more than 5,000 people from more than two dozen countries arrive in the area as refugees from foreign countries.

Portland has the most Sudanese immigrant population in the United States.

Just by walking through the neighborhood, says Hinman, you feel like the United Nations is right in your backyard. The vast diversity, many languages and continuing cultures don’t hinder the Root Cellar and EM’s message of Christian faith through service, however.

“I say we believe in God,” Hinman said of the volunteers. “And I don’t apologize for that one bit. We can do all sorts of projects, but it’s really the faith that does it. God just does things – it’s so awesome, I can’t stand it.”

Experience Mission will serve the Portland, Maine area until July 18, and hopes to return to the area again every summer for years to come.

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to Portland and other locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call  360-732-0986  to learn more.

Find Your Caribbean Mission Trip
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Find a Jamaica Mission Trip
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Find a Urban Mission Trip in Atlanta or another city in the USA:
www.experiencemission.org

By Mo Scarpelli

At the Christian Community Center in West Baltimore, a familiar chorus is heard every day across the playground area: “Mr. Tom! Mr. Tom!”

More than 50 kids show up at the community center at any one time, where they take Bible classes, play on the jungle gym, and this past summer, spent time with senior high Experience Mission volunteers.

“This is the best summer I’ve ever had here,” said Tom Homans, director of the Christian Community Center on Hollins Street. “Experience Mission has been such a blessing. The kids especially love the one-on-one time.”

One-on-one time is something Homans, or “Mr. Tom,” has had trouble giving all the children that attend the Community Center since he stepped into the full-time position almost exactly five years ago.

And although the kids in West Baltimore have a laundry list of needs, Homans says their need for meaningful relationships should be at the top of the list, even if it’s somewhat new to them.

“You can tell from some of the kids, the way they act, they just need attention,” said Homans. “They need someone to come in and hang out and listen to them. ”

This kind of ministry can be new to some volunteers, even if they’ve been on the mission-field for years.

TJ Speer of Peqauannoc, New Jersey spent a week in Arizona in 2006 and then another in Gary, WV in 2007, working under Experience Mission. He says he spent most of his time building and repairing homes.

This summer, Speer got to see a different side of mission work in Baltimore when he spent a day at the Christian Community Center.

“Just having the chance to interact with them on a more friendship basis than a service level has been really meaningful,” said 18-year-old Speer. “It’s very important for them because some have troubled backgrounds. They get to see that people care about them and they take on a positive uplifting spirit.”

Sleeping just around the block from the community center and passing by old row houses every day, Speer noticed that West Baltimore is not the safest place for a child.

Homans says drugs and alcohol are a constant temptation.

“The kids in the neighborhood are out 24/7,” said Homans. “Some of them have been through some rough stuff, they want to be happy, so they can’t say no to drugs or alcohol.”

Actually, that was Homans’ brothers’ story. Before Homans considered himself a Christian, he watched his brother become addicted to crack cocaine.

“I thought I’d get a call that he’s dead, even though he had a wife and kids,” said  Homans, thinking back to just six years ago. “I didn’t think he’d ever get clean.”

But to Homans’ surprise, he did. Furthermore, he found God in the process. And then he told Homans about his faith, and instilled a sense of conviction in his brother.

“My brother - he helped me know God’s power,” said Homans. “God got a hold of him and one night, he just started witnessing to me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Homans started pursuing his faith and volunteering with youth ministry at his church in “the County” (what Baltimoreans call the suburban area around the inner city). He heard about the Christian Community Center in Baltimore through his girlfriend and started stopping by to help out twice a week, when he wasn’t working.

“I felt called to work with kids and the church was a great place but my heart was really here,” said Homans, sweeping his hands to show his small office in the middle of the Community Center’s ground floor.

The Center first opened its doors in the fifties, in partnership with the Helping Up Mission, a drug rehabilitation center for men. In 1992, the Center became an independent institution, owned and operated by Betty and Charlie Horn, who still live in the area.

EM teams tour and help serve lunch at the Helping Up Mission, where volunteers get another shot at relational ministry - this time with adults trying to overcome their addictions with their faith.

The Helping Up Mission boasts a recovery rate of 67 percent - more than twice that of the average drug rehabilitation center. Mission employees attribute this to implementing faith in recovery.

Homans feels certain that faith helps everybody, no matter how hard the situation seems. After all, he was introduced to a living faith through his drug-addicted brother.

“If they don’t have the Lord, there’s not much you can do to help them,” said Homans of children and adults alike. “Around here, the temptation is so great to find pleasure that everyone needs the Lord.”

Experience Mission is facilitating mission trips to Honduras and Belize for Summer 2009. To learn more, visit <a href=”http://www.experiencemission.org”>ExperienceMission.org</a> or call the EM office at  360-732-0986

It’s nothing unusual to participate in a service project that benefits the community while on a short-term mission trip—in fact, that’s what one would hope for.

But Experience Mission is taking that model a step further. While partner community needs have always been taken heavily into consideration, EM has started an increased effort to let local community leaders determine the specific projects they need and see what can be done to support those needs, even if they fall outside the scope of a traditional short-term mission trip.

For example, in Jamaica this past summer, residents said they needed help building two new kindergartens. In Costa Rica the year before, residents of the village of Coroma said they needed a suspension bridge.

The idea, EM Executive Director Chris Clum said, is to make a more practical impact in residents’ lives and to inspire them toward a greater sense of ownership regarding community improvement efforts.

Clum said one concern has been making sure that such centralized projects do not take away from one-on-one time with community members—time that is practically guaranteed if home repair and construction comprises the majority of the work. But as it has turned out thus far, the inclusion of larger community projects has allowed for plenty of personal interaction.

“We’re actually engaging the community more, because we’re impacting more people’s lives,” Clum said.

Clum mentioned the schools built in Jamaica.

There, in the small rural town of Catadupa and nearby villages, Pastor Leroy Gordon of the Christian Fellowship Church and community members have maximized minimal government funding and led an effort to run community-based kindergartens for children between three and six years old. The classes of between 20 and 30 children are held in small churches without indoor plumbing; the children use pit toilets outside. The facilities were extremely basic, but they got by.

But newly imposed government regulations forced them out of those facilities and—if they wanted to continue holding kindergarten classes—required them to construct new buildings. The community of Catadupa, he said, would have to provide the government with blueprints designed by an architect. The process cost money the community didn’t have.

“What we have to do is hire people–skilled men–you are dealing now with a proper building,” Gordon said.

At that point, a grant from Canada-based S.O.S. became crucial, as did EM’s large volunteer teams. Gordon said the combination of the donation and enough manpower made it possible to make significant progress on the buildings, and this helped rally the community together.

“There was a tremendous sense of ownership in Jamaica,” Clum said. “This was their project, and we were just coming to help them with their project. The workers there were going to continue on.”

(Click here to read more about the school construction effort there.)

There was similar participation in Coroma, Costa Rica, the year before. The suspension bridge volunteers built would allow children to get the school and the elderly to seek medical care in those cases when the river there rose. Knowing this, community members took time off work to volunteer and took turns cooking for the volunteer teams.

Selecting projects like these does not, Clum said, mean that mission trips won’t involve plenty of spiritual outreach.

“The spiritual needs aren’t going to be met unless we’re connecting and engaging with people. So whatever we’re doing during the week, we have to involve interacting with people,” Clum said. He said if work projects don’t lend themselves to a great deal of interaction, a trip might incorporate outreach programs such as community barbeques, additional Kids Club activities or supporting Meals on Wheels programs in urban communities.

Clum said allowing the community to determine what the work projects will be is an important component of EM’s burgeoning Community Affiliate Program, in which community leaders are identified to work with residents toward year-round change, as opposed to solely relying on outside involvement during the summer months.

“The ownership rests in the community. Our role at EM is to help them connect to opportunities, resources and networks,” Clum said. “If one component is that they want teams to come down, then that’s great, but it’s part of their thing. And if it is one of those components—and we assume that it will be—then we bring the labor and the materials down there, and we go down to help them. It’s exactly flipped around, and exactly as it should be.”

Experience Mission is offering Summer 2009 mission trips to locations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit www.experiencemission.org or call  360-732-0986  to learn more.

In Junquillo, Honduras, many residents can’t afford to eat and don’t have access to running water. In Catadupa, Jamaica, children need a restroom for their kindergarten so they can avoid dangerous pit toilets. In Atlanta, children are in need of social programs to prevent them from falling into a violent gang culture.

Help address these vital needs by making a general donation to Experience Mission, 100 percent of which will go toward helping facilitate mission trips and humanitarian aid projects to the locations mentioned above and elsewhere.

Visit www.experiencemission.org or call 360-732-0986 to learn how you can help.