Students prepare for multi-country mission trip
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Two Oklahoma State University students will begin their trek across the globe this July on a mission trip that will stretch across 11 countries in 11 months. Ashley Breitnauer, agricultural communications senior, and Jacob McLafferty, university studies senior, will be participating in The World Race, a ministry of Adventures in Missions, an interdenominational missions organization.
Breitnauer and McLafferty will be traveling as one of three groups with about 63 teammates, most of whom are recent college graduates. They will travel, in chronological order, to the following countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.
Breitnauer heard about the missions trip while oversees on an international agriculture project.
“I heard about The World Race while I was in Rwanda from some locals and one of my teammates,” Breitnauer said. “Originally, I planned to enter the Peace Corps after graduation, but after my experience in Rwanda, my heart was pulled in this direction.”
McLafferty said he was “relieved and excited” to be accepted into the program. “However, it was kind of a shocker to my family and friends, because I’m just a normal dude.”
McLafferty and Breitnauer know that the trip itself will be anything but normal.
“Participants sleep in tents, and eat more platefuls of rice than they will ever care to talk about,” said Higgins. “More importantly, they are exposed and opened to life outside of their own. It is a really humbling experience.”
Participants often live alongside the locals they serve on a daily budget of $10 for food, lodging, and transportation, according to Micah Higgins, The World Race squad leader and mobilizer. “They find out that the statistics they hear about, the orphaned children, trafficked women, the enslaved and the starving, are not just numbers, but they are faces and they are names.”
Some days are packed full with construction work, bible school, building relationships with orphans or praying for the sick at a hospital. While other days will be slower, giving participants a chance to shop for groceries at the market, cook for their team or just spend time praying for the community they are serving at the time, explained Higgins.
The World Race participants are allowed to have one bag each, which cannot be more than 40 pounds. They can pack no more than a week and a half of clothes, a two-person tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mattress and pillow.
The cost of the trip is $15,500 for each participant, which pays for food and travel. Both Breitnauer and McLafferty have been fundraising to pay for the trip since fall 2011 by writing letters to family and friends for support and taking on jobs.
McLafferty is about half way to his fundraising goal and Breitnauer has about a quarter of her goal left to raise. To donate to Breitnauer and McLafferty, go to firstname.lastname.worldrace.org.
Story by Stephanie Taylor