“If you could tell the whole world one thing, what would it be?” I asked a Ugandan girl as I recorded her answer on my camera.

With a beautiful smile on her face she simply responded, “I would tell the world that love conquers all.”

One group of students engages in preparation for a debate defending the position that Africa can be transformed through political change. Another group asserted that education and a grassroots movement can change Africa.

Over three days, I had the opportunity to help organize and lead a group of teenage students through a youth conference focusing on unity and leadership. Not only were we able to discuss equality, gender roles in society, self-esteem, confidence, trust and perseverance, but also were able to put some of these topics into action. At one point, I found myself standing on a ledge with my hands in my pockets, slowly falling backwards into these students’ arms—trusting they would catch me. They caught me, and we followed up by talking about trusting others and why people should trust them.

On the final day, we organized a debate. The topic was “How to Change Africa”. They debated change would be best—a grassroots approach of educating the people or a political approach of changing leadership. Through the debate and various discussions, I found myself very impressed with teenage students that deeply desire to change and improve their nations, Africa and the world.  It is my prayer that leaders will rise up in this next generation, because they are a vital part of the future.

Since the youth conference, I have been reminded of Galatians 5:13, which says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another (ESV).”  Being a part of building a foundation of leadership centered on Christ in student’s lives at the youth conference has challenged me to become more like Christ in my own journey of serving God and serving others with love in Uganda.

Robyn Cash, a student at Sam Houston State University, is serving in Uganda with Go Now Missions.

The faint smell of rain in the air mixed with the aroma of foods from nations around the world as people gathered for a party at the Center of Hope in Uganda.

The party kicked off as Sudanese, Congolese, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Canadian, American, Korean and Ugandan women, children and men began to enter the front gates. Some carried traditional foods, and many entered hungry and ready to eat.

Party participants filled plates with food from Sudan, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Canada, America, Korea and Uganda.

Although I had been in Uganda only six days, I knew this “fellowship, food and fun” party would allow me to meet current and future students at the Center of Hope. Even though in the morning we faced some challenges with a lack of water and electricity, God restored each before the party began.

The rest of the day was devoted to building relationships and having fun with students and their families. There were opportunities to register for conversational English, art, sewing, computer, sports and Bible study classes at the Center of Hope for the upcoming eight weeks. Laughter, music, dancing, and a short presentation on Eritrea filled the afternoon.

The party provided a great way to be introduced and see all of the different cultures I will be living and working alongside this semester.

Robyn Cash, a student at Sam Houston State University, is serving in Uganda with Go Now Missions.

I find myself missing everything about Colorado—the significantly cooler and less humid weather, breathtaking views, the pristine yet quirky town of Fort Collins, the art culture, my host families, the interesting locals, the passionate church planters, and the encouraging company of my teammates. It was so sweet to spend each day without the time constrictions of organizations and class to simply serve a community with the love of Christ.

I spend much of my time thinking about the people I met and wondering what they are doing, hopeful that they continue to grow on their spiritual journey. At times, I feel discouraged that I cannot physically be there to offer a hug or a smile when they are facing painful experiences or to rejoice with them when something in the Bible clicks for the first time.

However, I am grateful for the moments I was given over 10 weeks. God used those moments to show me how to love generously, selflessly and more like him. I am trying to remember that I have a lifetime of those moments waiting to be obediently lived out as I follow Christ.

The mission has not ended. Instead of looking back on the summer as a great time in my life that I loved well, I want it to transcend into every season of my life, in whatever location I may be, as a lifestyle of love for the One who has saved me and for the people around me who do not know him.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned this summer is the importance of telling our stories about how God is working in our lives. As I have been sharing with people who ask about my summer, there are a variety of stories both big and small of how God worked. There are little stories of answered prayer for rain to stop when we were trying to do ministry and how God continuously provided places for me to live. And there are big stories of God’s faithfulness to move in individuals’ hearts as we learned to be consistent in friendships no matter the response we got in return.

As I told my stories all summer, I was encouraged by Colossians 4:7-8, where the Apostle Paul speaks of his friend who helped him to tell his experiences: “I am sending him to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts.” Think about the ways God is teaching you through daily occurrences and share those moments with others, as it can inspire them to fall deeper in love with the Lord, too. 

Amber Cassady, a communications student at Texas A&M University in College Station, served as a student missionary correspondent in Colorado with Go Now Missions.

Everywhere I went, people stared. They knew I wasn’t a Venezuelan. I looked differently, dressed differently, talked differently and walked differently. The first few weeks, I struggled with this a lot. I tried to fit in, to abandon my American ways, but it was futile. No matter what I did, people knew I was different.

Yet, my time in Venezuela has changed me, and I feared I would go through reverse culture shock when returning to the United States and thus feel homeless—belonging to neither Venezuela nor America. Yet, in a way, I think that’s how we as Christians should always feel. Philippians 3:20 says, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

After a tearful goodbye at the airport and multiple people asking when we were coming back, my teammate replied, “I don’t know if I ever will, but I’ll see you in heaven.” I long for that day when we will all worship God together in one place—our home. Hebrews 13:14 tells us, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” Ephesians 2:19 says, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

God used the fact that we stood out to bring people to his kingdom. People on the street stopped us to ask where we were from and why we were in Venezuela, giving us the opportunity to share the gospel and welcome many new brothers and sisters into our family. Although I am now in Texas, I want to retain this foreign feeling—to know that my time on earth is so short, just as my time in Venezuelan was temporal.

First, two of my roommates—guys with whom I had studied the Bible and ministered—simply dropped by the wayside, forsaking the faith. Next, I began to have nightmares—intense spiritual nightmares.

In the middle of one troubling night, I received a phone call from my mom in Canada. She told me my brother had been having seizures and was in the emergency room. The doctors had been running tests, and they found a spot on his back that could have been draining all of his spinal fluid. They did not know what this spot was, but it had the chance to be malignant.

As we waited for news on my brother, the enemy struck again. The transmission went out on my car. For weeks, I either had to walk everywhere, including to my job.

The climax of the enemy’s onslaught came in another nightmare. I was staring down at some hideous monster. It stared back and said: “Why are you going overseas? You are going to fail over there just like you have failed at everything else.”

But praise God, Philippians 4:13 was in me. I knew the nightmare was nothing but a lie from the enemy trying to keep me away from Asia. In recent weeks, I’ve seen God meet need after need in my life. I am learning to trust the promise: “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”

Michael, a student a Tarleton State University, will serve this fall as a semester missionary in East Asia with Go Now Missions. His full name is withheld for security reasons.

To end our time in Venezuela, our church partnered with a church in a neighboring town to hold a baptism at the foot of a waterfall on top of a mountain.

From the base of the mountain I could hear the roar of the rushing water that flowed steadily over rocks and ended in a small pool where the baptisms were conducted.

As we walked up the mountain and reached the peak, I was struck at the beauty around me. I was surrounded by the Andes Mountains, each covered with trees and plants — all lush and green and bursting with life. The color green has been said to represent renewal and eternal life.

As I thought about this and watched the pastor baptize each person, I was awed at the beauty of God. Baptism is a public demonstration of the personal decision to follow Christ and to give one’s life to him. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, the Scripture says, “Therefore, if anyone is Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, behold the new has come!” The green hue of the mountain was a physical representation of what God is doing in the hearts of each of the people who were baptized that day. He is renewing them, giving them eternal life with him.

The pool in which they were baptized also was symbolic. That pool of water had a source – the waterfall, just as we as Christians have a source of strength, hope, and joy – the Living Water, the Lord Jesus Christ. The baptism service was a breathtaking way to conclude an incredible summer in Venezuela. 

The missionaries, supported by the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, showed us around the facility God provided that allows them to train Venezuelan youth for the domestic and foreign mission fields.

The school sits on the grounds of the largest Christian camp in Venezuela. Every year, hundreds of Venezuelans attend camps where they hear the gospel, are strengthened in their Christian faith, are trained to share God’s word with others and enjoy fellowship together.

The missionaries explained that the camp and their ministry in preparing Venezuelans to fulfill the Great Commission is made possible through the Lottie Moon Offering, taken at Christmas time in Southern Baptist churches throughout North America.

It was really encouraging to see what God is doing through resources made available when his people respond in obedience and give with a cheerful heart. Because Baptists in the United States give, people in Venezuela not only are accepting Christ, but also are growing in a personal relationship with him and then making disciples of all the nations. Glory to God!

We met him playing basketball in the park and did our best to form a friendship with him. He was one of the most closed-off people I had ever met. He never asked any questions about what we were doing here all summer or offered to let us know much about him unless we asked specific questions. We did not even know his last name until after two weeks spending time with him.

At times, we questioned if we were going about things incorrectly and tried to figure out why this relationship seemed to be progressing slower than we would like. We had to give up our idea of how quickly progress should be made and trust God’s sovereign timing. After all, we are to persevere in showing God’s love to people, no matter what we see in return.

Despite the absence of depth in our conversations, he continued to hang around us—even knowing we were Christians—and begin to trust us. Slowly but surely, he began to offer us little bits of insight into his life.

Sadly, our time hanging out with him was cut short as he went away to help at his uncle’s farm for ten days. The night before he left, he invited us to his friend’s concert—a sign he trusted us enough to bring us into his own element and around the people he hangs out with. We praised God for letting us find favor with him finally.

At the concert, we were sitting around talking, and he kept saying how sad he was for us to leave. He even admitted that if he had known we were—as he put it—“religious” that first day we played basketball, he never would have hung out with us. He told us he really did not know what he believed religiously, and he was trying to figure that out.

We drove to his house the next morning to say our goodbyes. Jarred gave him a Gospel of John and asked him if he would consider reading it. To our surprise, he accepted it and said he would give it a chance.

As we drove away, praying that God’s love would continue to be evident in our relationship with him, I got one of the best text messages I have ever received. Our friend told us that he loved us. No one had ever done anything special just for him, but he felt loved and knew we were very accepting of him even though he was far from perfect. I was amazed at how God took just our spending time with him and used it to make him feel all those things in the space of just a few weeks.

This experience brings to me an even fuller understanding of the meaning of 1 Corinthians 13:7-8: “Love always protects, it always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Student missionary correspondent Amber Cassady, a communications student at Texas A&M University in College Station, is serving in Colorado with Go Now Missions.

We spent the past week at the 34th Marcha Evangelizador camp, founded by the Convencion Nacional Bautista de Venezuela. People of all ages came from all over Venezuela to attend the camp that focuses on evangelism and discipleship training. The vision of the camp is Joshua 3:5, where the Scripture says: “Then Joshua said to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.’”

About 210 people consecrated themselves in order to reach Venezuela for Christ. Participants of the camp, called marchistas, then were appointed to four states in Venezuela and are anxiously awaiting the Lord to reveals his wonders in Venezuela.

At the camp, the majority of each day was spent listening to sermons about how to evangelize and the importance of discipleship, as well as attending a prayer seminar. The Marchistas were divided into small groups to discuss the lectures, act out hypothetical situations using evangelism methods, and to pray for and encourage one another. Training also included how to reach out to the subcultures emerging in Venezuela.

The last night, 25 people from a town in south Venezuela came to share their testimonies. They had accepted Christ last year during the crusade and were ready to make new disciples.

The song is highly interactive, incorporating a different arm and leg movement after each repetition of a single verse as you continue to sing it over and over. After a while, you begin to look pretty ridiculous.

While children’s songs like these can be cheesy and overused, you never know where they might sneak up and surprise you in the most unexpected ways later in life. For example, God used the song recently—not in a sing-along time with 5-year-olds, but in Bible study between two college-age girls.

I was in a crowded coffee shop meeting a girl for Bible study. She is learning to read the Scriptures for herself for the first time. We were discussing what she read in Romans 4 about Abraham’s justification through faith. Assuming she knew the background on God giving Abraham and Sarah a son despite a seemingly impossible circumstance, I attempted to relate this to having faith in God to accomplish the humanly unattainable in our own lives.

Before I could finish, she burst into her rendition of “Father Abraham.” I could not resist this flashback to my childhood days and proceeded to sing along. We made quite a scene in the middle of the coffee shop as we sang at least three verses, complete with hand motions.

In the midst of hysterics from the complete goofs we had just made of ourselves, she asked me if that song was about the same Abraham in this passage. Somewhat taken aback, I asked her if she understood what the song is referring to when it references Abraham’s many sons. To my surprise, she had not, giving me the opportunity to share about how God miraculously provided Isaac as a son for Abraham and Sarah in their old age, asked Abraham to sacrifice him and then stopped him at the last minute, and how God rewarded Abraham for his faithfulness by promising him many descendants.

It was eye opening how easy it is to grow up singing songs about stories from the Bible and never really understand the meaning behind them. My sweet friend had known that song for years and never knew the story.

She has a long way to go in understanding the Bible, as we all do, but the little moments like that when something finally clicks are so encouraging to me. It is a glimpse into God at work in someone’s life as he becomes more real to that individual through God’s word.

Student missionary correspondent Amber Cassady, a communications student at Texas A&M University in College Station, is serving in Colorado with Go Now Missions.

When I finally realized that God was calling me to go on a mission trip last spring I remember praying, “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” Slowly but surely, I’m realizing that God doesn’t kid that often.

Since my team and I arrived in Philadelphia, we have mostly been working on college campuses. Recently, we were told to go to Community College of Philadelphia. According to our supervisor, it is the hardest campus to reach with the gospel.  We were just going to prayer-walk the campus and get a feel for where most of the students hang out.

I had been prayer-walking for a little over an hour when I found the student life center. I decided to go inside and look around, mainly to get out of the heat.  I sat down and started journaling about all I had seen and just writing my thoughts and prayers out to the Lord. As I was sitting there, a girl sat next to me. I had my headphones on, so at first I didn’t realize that she wanted to talk to me, but she finally tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. She was at the community college for orientation and wanted to know where she could get something to eat. I just happened to get lost in the student life center about 10 minutes before this conversation, so I pretty much knew exactly where everything was. 

As we walked to the food court, she and I started talking. When we finally transitioned from school talk to other things, I realized that I didn’t even know her name. I asked and we laughed. She told me her name was Emma. I could tell that Emma was definitely introverted and that her opening up to me was not easy for her. So, when I brought up religion, it was either going to be a hit or a huge miss. However, God is absolutely incredible, so when I brought up religion, she instantly was curious about what I believed. She told me her family wasn’t really religious because, they said, it got in the way of their goals in life. I asked her if she agreed, and she started to tell me how she felt that life didn’t even have a point to begin with. 

After that statement, I honestly cannot remember the exact words of our conversation. I know I answered all of her questions about Jesus Christ, and I explained to her how he died for us. The next thing I knew, I was leading her through a prayer to accept Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior.

We kept talking after that, and she started asking me all types of questions about what she was supposed to do know, where she should go to church, who she should hang out with, where she could find a Bible, how she can get to know God on a deeper level.  We talked out as much as we could, but eventually she had to go finish her orientation.  

After Emma left, all I could do was just sit in the chair, in the middle of the food court, and marvel at God.  I had never been there when someone else accepted Christ. The best thing about all of it is that I know it was God speaking through me. God is so powerful and so marvelous. God can use us even though we are weak. For it is through my weakness his strength and love shines, and it is through his strength and love that I now have a new sister in Christ, Emma Beasley.

Caitlin Campbell, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, is serving with Go Now Missions in Philadelphia.

“Alaska is the closest place to heaven on earth.” That’s what a man on a plane to Alaska told one of my teammates.

Indeed, the range of mountains and open wilderness is beyond belief—truly beautiful. Church groups from all over the United States have come to this beautiful place to share the gospel with the people of Alaska as part of Salmon Frenzy Ministries.

The evangelistic efforts are concentrated during the Alaskan dip-netting season for salmon.  During that time, the state allows residents to gather on beaches to catch salmon, fillet the fish and take the meat home for their families.

Our ministry is restricted in some respects. No non-Alaskan can help residents bring down their nets and coolers without being fined.

On the bright side, teams can give away free hotdogs, hot cocoa, coffee and lemonade.  We interact with everyone on the beach and build relationships. Kids’ camps also are provided to help the parents.

My experiences here with the Alaskans indicate many have a skittish mentality about the gospel. Many think they don’t really need to know Jesus.

But I am reminded of the promise in John 1:12: “But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name.” 

Katy Thomas, a student a Navarro College, is serving with Go Now Missions in Salmon Frenzy Ministries in Alaska.