This past June, my family collided our new life in California with our former life in Tanzania, where we had lived for 16 years, and took a team from our church on a short-term trip to our beloved Dar es Salaam. Altogether, we were a group of 24, most of them teens and young adults.
Of course, it wasn’t perfect. During the two weeks, the team experienced various stomach problems and strange rashes, some lost luggage, and a missing passport. But overall, it was the best short-term trip we’ve ever participated in (and there have been many). It only took us 20 years of life in missions to figure out what makes a short-term trip successful for both the team and the hosts!
The following five reflections are not the only way to have a successful STM, but they are what helped us. Similar principles could be applied to lots of different scenarios.
- We all stayed in the same house.
It took some work to find, and it wasn’t the perfect location, but we managed to find an Airbnb big enough to host all 24 of us. A perk to this was that it was way cheaper than a hotel or guesthouse, but the most significant advantage was that the team experienced the joy of living in community.
We ate all our meals together; we played games together in the evenings; we trapped rats together. The team witnessed their leaders grumpy and exhausted, fighting for dependence on Christ’s strength. They got a real picture of what missionary life can look like.
Since Americans tend to be private, isolated, and emotionally guarded, living together gave our visitors a new perspective on how much of the world lives and a new delight in how God created us to live in interdependence.
- Our ministry project targeted English speakers.
Like so many short-term mission trips, we put on a VBS-style day camp. But we intentionally targeted English speakers, which in Tanzania means middle-to-upper-class kids.
But wait! I hear the protests. Don’t poor kids need it more? Shouldn’t we focus our efforts on the most disadvantaged people?
Not if it means our love and message could be lost in translation or misinterpreted harmfully. Of course, putting on a Swahili-speaking camp could work if we had come alongside a local team of Swahili speakers. But we chose this target audience because we wanted our team to be able to interact meaningfully and personally with the kids. Since we only had five days with them, we wanted there to be as few cultural layers to worry about as possible.
No matter their economic status, we also knew this kind of camp would be a special blessing in a community where kids rarely get to go to camp–which is exactly what grateful parents told us.
- We exposed the team to poverty and then followed up with exposure to high-quality poverty alleviation efforts.
We took the team to my friend’s house for a day, where she showed them how she cooks over charcoal in an outdoor kitchen, hauls water for cleaning and washing clothes by hand, and makes do with electricity from one solar panel. She showed us how high the flood waters come into her house each year and testified to trusting Christ despite the constant threat of losing everything.
Many on our team left that day with the restlessness to “do something.” So that same week, we took them to visit two Christ-centered ministries focused on holistic poverty alleviation. We discussed why these organizations were effective–and how we can help without hurting.
- We arranged for the team to hear real-life stories from missionaries in diverse ministries, local believers whose lives have been changed by Jesus, and local ministry workers.
Each time we visited a ministry location, we asked to hear stories: the missionary’s call to service or the testimony of someone whose life had been changed as a result. We wanted the team to get a picture of the diversity of ministry taking place in Tanzania and hear about some of the extraordinary ways God is working there.
In addition, during several evenings, we invited guests to join us for dinner and then interviewed them. The team heard from an American missionary doctor, an African pastor’s wife whose husband died from brain cancer, a single female missionary, and a local Tanzanian who has devoted his life to evangelism in public schools.
- Learning was the main focus of the trip.
From our very first orientation meeting, we described the trip’s purpose as “service-learning.” Yes, the team would be serving, and we set the expectation that they should look for ways to be living sacrifices. But we also explained that your short-term trip should be about you, and that’s not a bad thing.
We gave each team member a journal and encouraged them to use it. We limited phone access to about 30 minutes a day to reduce distractions and help us all be fully present. We encouraged the team to ask questions of everyone they met.
Over and over, we reminded each team member that if they had the heart of a learner, God would use this trip to change their perspective on culture, poverty, missions, how God works in the world, and how He could use them to be a part of His story.
When we returned to the States and debriefed the team, God showed us the beautiful fruit from our fourteen days together in Tanzania. Hearing these young people share how God opened their eyes to a new way of seeing the world was remarkable. That’s what I would call success.
One young man, Valden McEuen, gave me permission to share some of his reflections. Below are his words with some slight edits:
The way of life in Tanzania is much more difficult than even impoverished Americans experience. People don’t have access to commodities like we do. They have far less conveniences and resources which makes a first-world life so easy. But they work with what they do have and learn to make do. Compared to most Americans, they are much more self-sufficient because they have to be.
Simple things like cooking meals or repairing houses help to bring together families and neighbors, because they are all working together and serving to help one another.
The people there live a more present life. They aren’t caught up in whatever next best thing is coming or how they can become as comfortable as possible. America has become a very materialistic society. So many people have been raised in what I would call a rat race, which strives for rewards like an impressive job, popularity, and the accumulation of possessions. It’s been something that’s so ingrained in American culture that most people don’t even think about why they work to achieve these things. It’s just what we are supposed to do with our life.
But at what point does somebody really “have it made?” Where is the line drawn? It’s easy to fall into this lifestyle of amassing success and seeking comfort that we completely miss things that are far more important. Something I noticed coming back to the States is just how many things I own and how so many of them are not necessary to the quality of my life.
Especially for our brothers and sisters in faith in Dar es Salaam, they find that the Lord is their portion, and they lack nothing. Giving their lives to the Lord gives them such joy amidst such hardship. They live to glorify our God rather than seeking glory or personal enjoyment in a life of comfort and complacency. Their culture has really changed my outlook on American life as a whole and my personal life.
Have you led or hosted a successful short-term mission trip this summer? Share your reflections in the comments.
