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More than 400 focus on missions during spring break

Janel Shoun-Smith | 

Next week is Lipscomb’s spring break, an exciting time for all students, who enjoy a well-deserved break, but a particularly exciting time for the more than 412 people who will be heading out on mission trips during spring break week.

Spring Break Missions 2014 1Spring break is the peak season for Lipscomb University’s missions office, with 22 teams traveling around the world, across the country and throughout the city. Mexico, Scotland, Honduras, the Caribbean, New York City, Dallas and just down the street are only a few of the places Lipscomb students, employees, alumni and friends will be traveling to during the week of March 16-22.

For more information on spring break missions destinations, click here.

“All of our trips were started by someone in our community who noticed a need and listened when God asked them what they could do about it,” said Mark Jent, director of missions outreach.

From Spring Break Nashville, where a team stays in Nashville and works with immigrant communities in their own backyard, to New York City, where the team partners with Camp Shiloh and Public School 179 in the Bronx; from the little Eastern European country of Moldova, where our teams provide counseling and emotional support for girls caught in human trafficking, to the remote areas of Guatemala, where our engineering teams work with local Mayan tribes to build life-saving infrastructure like bridges and clean water solutions, each trip began as a dream in one person to help where needed.

“Students and others come to us during the most spiritually formative years of their lives, eager to serve and make a difference,” Jent said. “We take that raw talent and passion and channel it into opportunities for worldwide evangelism, community development, humanitarian aid and, of course, those students’ personal spiritual formation.”

Spring Break Missions 2014 3In general, 75 faculty and staff volunteer their time each year, plus another 75 alumni and more than 100 area professionals such as doctors, nurses, ministers, engineers and artists participate in Lipscomb missions. Over the past 12 years Lipscomb Missions has grown immensely, with more than 700 volunteers participating in more than 50 trips at spring break, summer, fall break and winter break.

“We know we can’t do much in a week or two, but over time we build deep relationships with great partner ministries, serving them as they serve the communities they live in” Jent said. “Ministries that we partner with come to know they can depend on us. Out of the 50 trips in 2013, we have facilitated 20 for a decade or more. Another 15 trips have returned to the same locations for five to nine years.”

If you would like more information about participating in a mission trip or supporting Lipscomb Missions, contact Mark Jent at 615-966-6261 or at mark.jent@lipscomb.edu.