In Uruguay, a team of athletes conducts soccer camps; works with local outreach efforts; plays soccer with local youth; and, through the venue of athletics, finds young people searching for meaning in life. The athletes share with their new friends the light of the Gospel.
In another part of the world, a similar scene is repeated. A team of American English teachers enters a university classroom for a month-long, summer language camp. These teachers spend their mornings in a classroom of twenty-five to thirty students, teaching lessons in the English language and in American culture and life. In the afternoons, they scatter throughout the city with their students—young people burdened by the emptiness of their lives—to continue the language-learning, a process naturally leading to the development of meaningful friendships that will carry on long past the summer months. The teachers offer their new friends the fullness of life in Christ.
In yet another part of the world, another team experiences a week of cultural studies in Luxembourg and then invests a month in an aggressive, four-week outreach. Working with local believers, they make contact with the people of Scotland, building lasting relationships and offering a culture—caught in the deceit of modern philosophy—the rescue found in the truth of Christ.
In central Asia, yet another group continues a strategic work in a culture needing the message of truth. Their work is not new; it is the continuation of a work begun four years ago and over the years by locals and by returning teams. Team members spend their mornings in foreign language studies taught by local language speakers; then, in afternoon hours, they scatter to practice their newly acquired language skills, to conduct ethnography surveys, and to search for new people to meet. They might meet some on the bus or some on the road; anywhere might open the door to a new contact—someone with whom they can build a redemptive relationship.
What are these teams? Who are these people? And what unifies them from their diverse locations scattered across the globe?
Simply, these are Northland Center for Global Opportunities summer trips. The people involved are an eclectic collection of students, faculty, and staff who have prepared to enter their field through intensive linguistic and cultural studies conducted throughout the year. They are determined to impact a culture in darkness with the message of hope and light, longing to see lives rescued from sin and freed to know the fullness of the abundant life in Christ. They are people whose day begins with a prayer to make even one new contact . . . to have even one opportunity to share the message of hope with people who have no hope. They are people driven by a passion for living out the Great Commission, taking the redemptive message of the Cross to the far ends of the earth.