Location: Columbus, OH
Team size: 4
Field expense: $1100 plus roundtrip travel
Job description: His light, His love & His joy are breaking into the darkness through friendships. Your task is to become community with refugee families who have lived in the Midwest for up to 20 years while maintaining traditional dress, cooking, and folk Islam practices. The children in this neighborhood are the 2nd generation to live in the USA. Few have ever visited Africa. Their English skills are significantly higher quality than that of their parents. They are obedient to traditions out of respect, but their hearts & minds are becoming Western, their souls are confused, conflicted, and could be ripe for harvest. Part of the training will be to learn & understand shame-honor based cultures and use Biblical stories in contact of this mentality. Parents tenaciously hold to tradition, many fathers still follow Islamic law and mothers have horror stories of fleeing Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya as well as heart-breaking stories of shame assimilating into Western culture and American school systems, while trying to learn English to survive.
Spend time prayer walking, tutoring children of all ages using academic skills, crafts, sports & cooking. Early evenings involve drinking tea while sharing & listening to stories with the parents, even late-night meals & celebrations. May also be some opportunity to build relationships with international students who are spending the summer on various university campuses in mid-Ohio.
Dates for Summer 2021
May 31 Team leader
training begins (Nehemiah Teams Training Center, Mentone, Alabama)
June 3 Team member
training begins (Alabama)
June 8 Teams deploy for
the field (via ATL)
July 28 Teams return to
US for debrief (Alabama)
July 31 Teams return home
COVID-19 in 2021
We continue to move forward in planning for summer 2021 teams. Decisions
will be made as we get into 2021 as to whether or not certain teams may need to
be cancelled due to travel restrictions or local situations. Info will be
posted on the website if teams are cancelled.