Mission-Minded Youth Provide Help and Hope

Nov. 5, 2012 - PRLog -- Group Mission Trips is excited to offer two weeklong mission opportunities for youth and youth groups. Week of Hope and Workcamps give teens two different mission experiences that provide life-changing involvement with Christian outreach projects that help people in need. While young people enjoy fun and fellowship with other youth and develop new friendships, these experiences will also impact the rest of their lives for Christ.

Week of Hope offers teens the opportunity to focus on serving the needs of people through local ministries and non-profit organizations. These trips are uniquely designed as affordable five-day youth missions that immerse students in the life-changing experience of serving both people in the local community and each other. Projects in a Week of Hope include supporting local food banks; playing games with elderly people; helping to lead day camps for children; landscaping homes, non-profits and ministries; working with disabled children; and serving residents in need in a variety of ways.

Programs are led by well-trained staff leaders, and students also serve by leading various parts of worship. The groups also take turns preparing meals and cleaning the facilities where they live with other youth groups during the week.

Workcamps from Group Mission Trips are weeklong home repair mission camps for Christian youth. These camps are big, high-energy experiences where youth groups serve people in need through challenging home repair projects. For six days, youth join other young people to repair sagging porches, rebuild unsafe steps and wheelchair ramps and paint homes. The young people will transform a house, and God will transform their faith.

At a Workcamp, everything is organized for the youth, including cooking and cleaning, so they and their leaders can focus on working hard, having fun and growing closer together as a group.

Jeff Thompson, spokesperson for Group Mission Trips’ Week of Hope and Workcamps, said, “These mission trips are all about making connections—connecting youth to other youth, connecting helpers to people who need help, connecting today’s youth to Christ. Besides the wonderful benefits these projects provide to the people in need who are helped, the ultimate goal is for students who participate in these two excellent outreach efforts to begin understanding what Jesus meant in Matthew 29:28 when He said, ‘I came not to be served but to serve.’ It’s our prayer that they will never be the same again and that their lives will become forever focused on Christ and glorifying Him through service to others.”

And it’s clear that those goals are being achieved. For instance, Gianna, age 15, said of her experience, “This week has been life changing for me. I can honestly say that God has shown me He is real, and He is amazing. Before this trip, God was kind of missing in my life, and I feel that He brought me on this trip for a reason . . . . This trip has been an emotional rollercoaster for me. I cried, I laughed, I loved and much more. But I did all of those things because God was really becoming clear to me for the first time in my life. He brought me so many new things, from great friendships to a whole new take on life.”

Group Mission Trips invites youth leaders and youth groups to participate in a Week of Hope or a Workcamp. For detailed information, locations of upcoming trips and to register, please visit the website at www.GroupMissionTrips.com.