Students get international experience close to home

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FORT WORTH—Howard Payne University students participated in international missions outreach over spring break, traveling just two hours from their Brownwood campus.

Sixteen Howard Payne students spent spring break in Fort Worth, working with refugees from Bhutan, Burma, Iraq and Somalia.

Angelie Lara taught financial literacy classes to adult refugees during the Howard Payne University Baptist Student Ministries spring break trip to Fort Worth.

During the week, the students taught financial literacy classes to adult refugees—explaining how to open a checking account, use debit cards and fill out a check register.

The Baptist Student Ministries volunteers spent their afternoons playing games and tutoring children in nearby apartment complexes. The group also distributed hygiene packets, attended an ice cream social and organized donation areas.

Although the language barrier proved difficult at times, the students managed to connect with the refugees.

“I feel like I made 30 new friends in just four days, and while I can only pronounce a few of their names, I will be thinking about them and praying for them often,” senior Larrissa Perkins said.

The group partnered with Amy Perkins, a 2007 Howard Payne graduate, who is a volunteer coordinator with a local refugee resettlement agency in Fort Worth. 

Howard Payne University Baptist Student Ministries volunteers gathered for prayer before heading to Fort Worth to spend their spring break working with refugees.

Several Fort Worth churches—Agape Baptist, Wedgwood Baptist and Gambrell Street Baptist—contributed to the mission week by providing meals and housing to the Howard Payne group.


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“This is honestly one of the best mission trips I’ve ever been on or led,” BSM Director Katy Blackshear said. “The fact that we were able to minister cross-culturally in our own backyard is amazing to me. Seeing the students love and serve the refugees we met was a true joy.

“The thing God taught me over the course of the week is that there are many … all over the world, in Fort Worth, and right here in Brownwood who simply need an advocate—someone on their side so that they aren’t alone.”

One memorable experience the students recalled was joining more than 30 people in a small apartment for a house church worship service for the Karen people of Burma.

While working with refugees in Fort Worth, Howard Payne students had the opportunity to entertain them with singing.

“It was an awesome experience getting to see the joy in the faces of those people who had been chased out of their home country and are now being resettled for the second time,” Larissa Perkins noted.

“They are in a setting that is drastically different from the one they came, submersed in a language that they have had very little instruction in, and yet they smile as they praise our God who provides for our needs.”


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