Take a look at some of our past missions trips by viewing the clip below and that will give you a bit of an idea of what we are about when we do a missions trip – our trips are about community: community with each other but also doing community with people who are toiling out there doing radical stuff to make a difference in this world – often at tremendous personal cost to themselves: that is what is fantastically challenging about doing a missions trip.
Another thing about our trips is that we try to make sure that our trips are not just about us blasting out and doing our thing - instead for the past four years our missions trips have been the hands and feet of ongoing projects to support the work of the Youth With A Mission ministry, Children at Risk, in Cambodia - a project that our Embracing the Neglected fund supports.
Our teams helped build a community center in Takeo Village and that center now hosts programs for more than 500 children (most of whom barely have clothes on their backs). Each year we go over and find new ways to support the ongoing work there – whether it is doing programs in schools, helping with building projects or de-licing and providing basic health care for children. Soon we’d like to work in with ETN funded projects in Indonesia too.
Some FAQs about our missions trips:
Who can do a HBC short term missions trip:
Unless you are coming with your mum or dad, you need to be 15+ and under 100 years of age – and love Jesus.
But, expressing an interest in being on a short-term mission trip does not automatically mean you’ll get to go – you may only ever do one real missions trip so the team leaders need to know you are ready for it – that’s why participation in a missions trip involves an application process. Ask Pastor Craig Allan for an application form.
How long is each trip and what can I expect on a trip:
We try to keep our trips to 2-3 weeks, just long enough to get a real taste of cross-cultural missions. Each trip we organize we try to combine a bit of teaching (discipleship based) with some hardcore hands-on work – this is possible because of the agencies and missionaries we work with. What we do try to ensure is that our teams hit-the-deck running from day 1 of each trip. We include cross-cultural orientation, teaching on religions of the areas we are going into, worship, prayer times, riding on elephants, eating lots of amazing food ……and some not-so-amazing food at times.
Also, getting to know how to hear the voice of God, is a big part of why we do these trips – when you are with the same group of people day in day out, praying and supporting and encouraging , and even getting gastro bugs with each other, a real trust develops and we deliberately draw on that trust to deepen our experiences of God and his Holy Spirit.
When is the next trip and what is the cost:
Our next trip is January 6-24, 2012 – to Cambodia and an Aids Orphanage in Chaing Rai, Thailand and cost is $2500 – apply ASAP as bookings needs to be made soon.
Contact the church if you are interested in our mission.