How did we get here? About “mission” and the United Methodist Church Mission Volunteers program.

We are serving at ARI through the Mission Volunteers program of the United Methodist Church (UMC).

First, a word about the words “mission” and “missionary”. When you hear those words, you might think only of proselytizing – one person actively trying to convert other person to a religious belief. Something like the 16th century priests accompanying the conquistadors throughout the Americas or the 21st century earnest young men in the musical comedy The Book of Mormon. That is not what we are talking about here.

As John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, famously said,

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”

That is the type of “mission” we are talking about here.

There are many ways to look at mission work, but broadly speaking much mission work can be put into three categories.

On one end, there are mission teams. These involve short-term projects where a team will (usually) travel to a site to perform a defined task. For example, each year our own Episcopal church sends a team of volunteers to Juarez, Mexico, to build a house for a family. A typical mission project lasts a few days, a week, or perhaps a bit longer. The UMC calls this Volunteers in Mission, or UMVIM.

On the other end, there are missionaries who have a particular skill and work in a long-term role to help an underserved community. For example, a doctor may work in a clinic for years or decades. The UMC calls these people Global Missionaries.

What we are doing falls in between – mission placements from two months to two years. The UMC calls us Mission Volunteers. A mission volunteer supports the work of an existing institution or program.

This is Chrys’ fourth placement as a UMC Mission Volunteer. In 2023 she served three months working in the library and the huerta at Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in San José, Costa Rica.

Last year she taught English for three months at Colegio Inglés in Iquique, Chile.

And earlier this year she taught English through the Manos Juntas mission in Rio Bravo, Mexico.

This is Scott’s first placement.