Baptist students gain a taste of global poverty

ELM MOTT—Spartan living accommodations—a 10-foot by 10-foot room without electricity or running water with only a little heat from a wood-burning stove—didn’t deter the student workers.

Seven college students from Baptist Student Ministries around Texas rose early each morning to work hard in community gardens and learn about global hunger issues as they spent a week at the World Hunger Farm, near Waco.

The group was one of several Go Now Missions student teams who served in Texas, Nicaragua, the Middle East, East Asia, Eastern Europe and North Africa during Christ-mas break to share the love of Jesus and to expand their worldviews.

The World Hunger Farm trip was designed for students to experience what it is like to live in poverty conditions, while learning the responsibility Christians have to help the poor and hungry.

“We wanted to come here to learn about how poverty is taking place worldwide and how we can make a difference by helping people who are poor,” said Krista Davis, team leader and associate director at the Stephen F. Austin Baptist Student Ministry.

Amber Hamilton (left) and Alyssa Evalle pull weeds in the carrot patch during their weeklong stay at the World Hunger Farm.

Matt Hess, education director at the World Hunger Farm, led the team in classes about global hunger and food production, as well as assigning the group chores such as herding and milking goats, gardening, gathering eggs, collecting firewood and cooking for volunteers on the farm.

“We want everyone who comes to the farm … to gain a better appreciation for food, where it comes from, who is involved in our food systems and the justice, or lack of justice, involved in our food system. We want them to gain that understanding and then be able to respond,” Hess said.

The goal is to train people to appreciate resources and use them wisely to make an impact on others—whether through spending money responsibly, growing their own food, being informed about causes of poverty or becoming an advocate for hunger issues, Hess said.

“We are attempting to alleviate hunger,” Hess said. “And we are contributing to the alleviation of hunger by training interns or live-in volunteers to be involved in nutrition programs domestically and abroad as missionaries or with other organizations or through the Peace Corps.”

For the team, being educated in global food systems and causes of poverty has allowed them to see the approach they need to take to provide long-term help and change.

“A lot of this is teaching us what it takes to rehabilitate more than relieve people,” Davis said. “By farming and working the land, we get the opportunity to teach someone else that is in poverty how to farm themselves and how to take care for themselves to survive to where they are not depending on other people.”

To help the team implement what they learned when they return to their colleges and universities, Mallory Homeyer, lead organizer of the Texas Hunger Initiative, shared how they can participate in the initiative, which is striving to alleviate hunger in Texas by 2015, through policy building and community efforts.

“I’m excited to talk to them about the hunger initiative, because I thought it might be something they could take home that’s practical when they feel overwhelmed with the week,” Homeyer said. “This might be a way they could get involved with hunger in their communities and talk to some of their peers, as well.”

A Go Now Missions team stayed in the Nicaragua house while serving at the World Hunger Farm. The house was made to mimic a simple home built by Habitat for Humanity in Latin America. The houses typically are 10-foot by 10-foot shelters without running water or electricity, heated by wood-burning stoves.

The Texas Hunger Initiative is working on forming local coalitions to identify hunger needs and become advocates for hunger issues. Homeyer shared options for taking information the group learned at the farm to mobilize other students to take part in alleviating hunger in Texas and worldwide.

“Working in a garden, you don’t get to have people constantly praising you,” Ho-meyer said. “But I think that they may not realize the lasting effects of what this week meant in their life until years down the road when they get in the busyness of life and they realize God intended us to rest and to enjoy his creation and to feed the hungry.”

Brenda Sanders, director of Go Now Missions, said Christmas trips like the one at the hunger farm are open doors for students to learn about the world and to naturally share about Christ because of the time or year.

“We know it is a unique time of year for two reasons—students are available because they have time off and because of the opportunity to share about Christ in such a natural way because of the holiday season,” Sanders said. “It’s just a natural time to share at this unique time of year.”

The goal of the Christmas trips is for the students to spread the love of Christ across the globe, seeing lives changed in the process. But many times, the greatest changes happen within students’ hearts.

Crystal Donahue, a senior at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor who served on the East Asia team, saw how God is working in hearts around the world and walked away with a new passion to share the love of God.

“The glimpse I got was that the Spirit is strong there, and he is working in people’s hearts,” Donahue said.

“My perception is that God has placed laborers there that are planting seeds of trust among the people so that their actions back up their beliefs. God is burdening hearts in America and others elsewhere to live, serve, love and build relationships with a community in an approachable fashion.”

John Williams, a senior theater major at East Texas Baptist University who served on the North Africa team that prayer-walked an urban area looking for opportunities to share the hope of Christ, realized what a blessing it is to have the freedom to read the Bible and discuss Scripture.

“This trip has changed me in so many ways, making me more thankful for the God we serve and for the order he gives,” Williams said.

“In (the North African country where he served), the priest reads the Bible, and the priest interprets it for them. We need to be thankful for the society we live in where we can look at the Bible and interpret the Bible ourselves.”

For Joshua Lubbers, an international studies major at Texas Tech University who served in the Middle East, his time away meant gaining a new worldview of the Middle East, realizing it isn’t a scary place, but one that needs more people to take the love and hope of God to the people there.

Above all, Sanders hopes the students will take their new experiences back to their campuses, realizing they can implement the same efforts and passion there.

“We hope that this whets their appetites for missions and that they go back to their campuses changed,” Sanders said.

“For those who served overseas, I hope they go back looking for international students on their campus and ways to share the love of Christ with them. For others, I pray they will put into action something they learned while serving this Christmas.”

As the Christmas teams were returning, Go Now Missions commissioned 11 students to serve as semester missionaries in Texas, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Spain and South East Asia during the next six months.

To learn more about Go Now Missions or to support student missions, visit www.gonowmissions.com.