These days, the options in Mission Trips are plentiful. You can travel overseas or domestically and usually have opportunity for travel year round. But are all Missions organizations created equally? Well it's not a surprise to find out that there are vast differences among Missions organizations in America and Internationally. To get started in your quest to uncover the expertise and professionalism of each organization, you need to ask some basic questions of the organization when you call to inquire on Mission Trip. The following are eight basic questions you should ask and get acceptable answers from:
1) What is the physical location (address) of the Missions Organization?
It may surprise you to find out that about 50% of all Missions advertisements show a PO Box as mailing address. Although this may indeed be a separate address from the physical location of the Mission organization, often it is a cover for an organization that has no physical missions base or property. Why is this important?
Well for starters, if the organization has no missions base other than their house which they live in, it may be an indication that they will be sending you to a "borrowed" location where they act as a broker to sleep your team at someone else's church - often without beds or on site showers or a functioning kitchen. In this situation, the organization has no long term investment in providing a full missions experience where they own the facility and have a level of control over the accommodations to ensure a safe and comfortable week. Do you want to pay money to a middle man that nothing invested in your week - but rather plays the role as a booking agent to sleep you in some other town in the USA or internationally, in a facility that they do not own.
2) What are the actual ministries that the organization has an ongoing relationship with?
If a Missions organization works year round in their community, they will have built working relationships with all of the legitimate ministries within the area you will be travelling to. This is important because schedules often change due to weather and sickness and other unforeseen issues and that requires your Missions organization to be nimble in moving schedules to keep you busy. If the Missions organization is not running a local Mission in the city or locale you are serving in, the potential for ineffective serving opportunities and scheduling "holes" can occur.
3) What meals are served - are they frozen or made from scratch in the Mission Organizations kitchen? Will they be serving you 3 meals per day?
You will work long hours in Mission service. Imagine working all day with your team and then having to navigate your way to a restaurant with your entire team at 7:00 p.m. This does not even take into account the extra costs you will incur for eating out.
These are just three of the basic questions you should ask when deciding upon an appropriate qualified Missions organization for your team Mission Trips. Stay tuned and we will cover a few more questions you might want to ask in our next blog.
https://www.epicmissions.org
THE MISSION - Thoughts and Discussions on what it means to be used by God to spread the good news. We are a short-term missions organization that facilitates missions work in Florida. We custom design a week of missions service for college, high school and adult individuals. We also serve public high school teams on weeks of community service where they serve as part of their community service requirements.
