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| DAN DUNAGAN, adult sponsor of a Texas Summer Mission team serving in East Asia, poses with children in an English class. |
Students have a story to tell of nations
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___IRVING--Hugs, smiles and occasional squeals of delight greeted student summer missionaries as they reconvened for their end-of-summer debriefing Aug. 2.
___The event at a hotel near DFW International Airport was part family reunion, part revival and part counseling session. Returning summer missionaries worshipped together, told about their experiences and brought emotional closure to a summer of ministry and challenges.
___The annual debriefing session drew many of the 289 college students sent out this summer through the Baptist G
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VIEW a PHOTO GALLERY of summer missions activities.
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eneral Convention of Texas student missions office.
___Fresh back from places as close as Arlington and as far away as Southeast Asia, the volunteer missionaries gathered in informal groups to dissect their common experiences and catch up with Baptist Student Ministry friends they had not seen all summer. In one room, each student was encouraged to sit before a video camera and record a few highlights of the summer.
___All the students had stories to tell, whether about new foods they tried, unexpected challenges they faced or people whose lives they had touched.
___One group of students sported blue T-shirts emblazoned with the words "I Ate Balut."
___Balut, they explained to anyone who asked, is a Filipino delicacy that in more common terms might be called cooked duck embryos.
___"We tried food from eight countries," said Nancy Higgins, who attends the University of Texas at Arlington.
___She and Steven Daughtry of the University of Texas and Phillip Nagano of Texas Wesleyan University were part of a team assigned to work with Baptist missionary and Amarillo native Anne Burton in Los Angeles. There, they helped lead a ministry to international students at the University of Southern California.
___In addition to teaching conversational English classes, they practiced the "ministry of hanging out," they explained, by building relationships with international students and their spouses, many of whom are extremely lonely in the United States.
___"Every conversation was a chance to mention something about God," Higgins said.
___The internationals were "really much more open than American students would be" to hear about Christianity, Daughtry added.
___And sharing the gospel with these international students could have a global impact, the students believe. "It's like God got tired of waiting for us to go (preach) to these places, so he sent them here," Daughtry said.
___"There are lots of places in the United States where the world is at your door," added Higgins.
___Other student missionaries learned they didn't have to travel far to reach the world either.
___Meredith Wood of Texas A&M University's Corpus Christi campus and Ruby Mendoza of the University of Texas Pan American spent the summer in Lubbock working with University Baptist Mission.
___They sorted food and clothing, assisted people in need and even witnessed the arrest of a woman they were helping by giving a ride.
___The student missionaries conducted a weekly Bible study at the county jail, where they led two women to faith in Christ. Upon reflection, Wood marveled at how she had stretched her faith this summer. The Bible study she led in the jail was the first Bible study she ever led anywhere.
___Across the world, Texas Baptist student missionaries used creative and varied techniques to share the gospel.
___Chelsea Oliver of San Jacinto College and Jessica DuBose of Stephen F. Austin State University were part of a team serving in New York state. They traveled to a new location each week.
___One week was spent in Queens, where Oliver and DuBose devoted their days to riding the subway and engaging people in conversations about spiritual matters.
___Once the New Yorkers heard the Texans' accents, that automatically opened a conversation, Oliver reported.
___Every student interviewed said he or she ended the summer closer to God and with spiritual insights unknown before.
___"God helped to make my heart for internationals much bigger," said Daughtry, one of the team serving in Los Angeles. "I never had any Chinese friends before. I never knew anyone from Iran."
___Not only were his horizons expanded, Daughtry said, his vocational calling was clarified. "I know that my future is with missions without a doubt."
___Through work at the Fletcher Mission Center in Houston, Jeanna Dickerson heard God's call to change her major and transfer from Henderson State University to Houston Community College.
___"I'm learning to trust in God," she said. "This was the best experience of my entire life. It's that feeling where the hair sticks up on your head."
___Some also learned that effective ministry is a daily lifestyle.
___Brian Smith, a recent Baylor University graduate who spent the summer in Southeast Asia, recalled the lesson taught by a Southern Baptist missionary he worked alongside: "Each day as my foot hits the doorstep, I ask God, 'What do you want me to see today?'"
___"It's a lifestyle," Smith concluded after serving in a country where missionaries may not work openly.
___That's a challenge many of the students said they're gearing up to face as they head back to campus.
___Summer missions is "an experience you'll never forget," explained Marna Williams of Texas Christian University, who served at Greater Gresham Baptist Church in suburban Portland, Ore. "The summer was completely for Christ."
___The challenge now, she added, is "trying to translate that back into my life at school."
___But with the sometimes dramatic experiences of the summer burned into their memories, students said they're going back to campus with a new way of looking at their world.
___"God gave me a vision for my life, to live every day for him, taking Jesus and shining his light to people all around me," said Deanne Osborn, a University of Mary Hardin-Baylor student who served at Mission Arlington.
___"I saw how just being zealous for God can impact a community," she explained. "It stretched me in every way imaginable. ... It made me realize how much Jesus' light is needed even in the cities where we live."
___And from the students who sampled food from eight countries, there's one important culinary lesson to keep in mind. Apart from sushi, which they never knew came in so many varieties, everything else tasted like chicken. Really. Even the chicken feet.
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