Baylor students serve through international & local missions

Through a half-dozen mission trips and extended service projects over the summer, Baylor University students visited AIDS clinics, installed hydroelectric generators, tutored children and established relationships to make an impact on lives for Christ’s sake.

Extended summer trips to Ghana and Rwanda and three trips to Honduras involved about 170 students, faculty and staff, increasing the number of participants from previous years. Teams represented various disciplines including engineering, education, deaf education, social work, psychology, pre-med, religion and theology.

The extended missions, local missions and service projects are sponsored primarily by the department of spiritual life—formerly called university ministries—and work to meet goals of the Baylor 2012 vision, to help Baylor students “understand life as a stewardship and work as a vocation.”

“With the restructuring of university ministries to spiritual life, we will make a more concentrated effort to focus on what missions at Baylor should and could be,” said Rebecca Kennedy, director of missions in spiritual life.

Discipline-specific missions

A Baylor student bonds with a Honduran child during an engineering mission trip .

“The term we call our effort is called ‘discipline-specific missions.’ We create opportunities for students to use knowledge from the classroom applied to real-life experience,” Kennedy said. “Let’s say a student is majoring in engineering. If we plan a mission trip for an engineering team to build a generator in a remote village, then we have given students a tangible way to think about their vocation as a mission.”

Engineering students travelled to Honduras with an organization called Engineers with a Mission. Brian Thomas, a full-time lecturer in the engineering and computer science and an adviser of the organization, stayed in Honduras seven weeks, and the student group stayed two weeks.

“Most days while I was there, we worked on installing a micro-hydroelectric generator which will end up supplying small amounts of power to about 30 homes,” said Jonathan Crabtree, a senior engineering major from Leawood, Kan., who traveled to Honduras with Engineers with a Mission.

“We ran power lines to the homes and installed electrical meters. The best part of each day was working with the people. We worked side by side with some of the villagers each day…as we tried to bless their lives, they ended up blessing ours more.”

Studying the effects of genocide in Rwanda

In Rwanda, students researched the effects of genocide on the culture, economy and religion of the country 10 years after civil war. The group led arts and crafts, played sports with more than 500 children, visited AIDS patients and sang with the youth of a church with whom they partnered.

Baylor student Abby Taylor hugs a child in Rwanda.

“The most significant memory I have was when we visited the AIDS hospital to visit and pray for patients at the hospital,” said Abby Taylor, a senior education major from Plano.

“Initially walking into the first room, I had to leave immediately because it was too heartbreaking—too disturbing.”

She saw a young girl lying on a metal bed frame with a thin mattress, covered only by a thin blanket.

“We later learned that she was 13 years old, an orphan, and had been in that same hospital room since she was 9 years old,” Taylor said. “The hospital only provides the AIDS medication, so she relied on donations for food and hygiene items.

“It really made me realize how incredibly blessed we are, how much power we have simply by being Americans, and consequently how much responsibility we have to make a change.”

Waco missions

Baylor students work on a water project in a Honduran village.

Waco-area organizations—and the children they serve—also were the recipient of volunteer help by Baylor students. Summer service projects in Waco included Ashton Oaks Kids’ Club and Parkside Kids’ Club, where Baylor students lead a Bible story time, provided snacks and played games with children in a low-income apartment complex.

Baylor students also helped children with their studies at Waco Community Church Tutorials and at Emmanuel Tutorials, where they led tutoring sessions for children whose parents are learning in ESL classes at Emmanuel Baptist Church.

Baylor students also volunteered in special-needs ministry, working with the Association for Retarded Citizens and assisting in social events such as bowling and zoo trips. At Hillcrest Hospital Ministry, students visited, encouraged and prayed for patients and their families at Hillcrest Hospital in Waco.

“We think about missions as a lifestyle, not a one-time, two-week trip,” said Kennedy. “Our approach is to educate and create opportunities for students, faculty and staff to use their discipline as a way to be the hands, feet and face of Christ to the world.”