One of three mission trips held by Milo Adventist Academy (Days Creek, Ore.) during spring break was to Sundarban Island, India.
The group planned to preach in five different villages and present a Vacation Bible School (VBS) program to the Adventist school. These students were excited to reach out to the people of India and to share God’s word around the world.
As with most mission trips, this one has changed the lives of those who went to serve as well as those served.
The VBS program was so well-attended the Milo group had to get creative with their craft projects, as about 600 children showed up.
Jessie Sheese from Coos Bay, Ore., loved helping and singing with the children and found the parents to be so trusting that one handed her a baby to watch for the whole evening.
Francieli Altamirano, a senior from Battle Ground, Wash., shares, "One time, I stopped to visit the girls, and the moment they noticed I was in the room they stopped what they were doing, called, "Ma'am, ma'am!" and ran to hug me. I have made it part of my routine to go sit with them on their wooden beds. Sometimes I try to teach them English words by pointing at objects and having them repeat after me, and sometimes we sing songs that we have been teaching them in VBS."
The Milo students who went to preach also had an amazing experience. Katie Duclos, a senior from Sutherlin, Ore., was fearful of preaching and felt sick before she left. However, her first miracle happened when she got on the plane and her sore throat disappeared.
That’s not the only thing that disappeared. In her village church, when setting up for the meeting, they noticed a huge amount of bugs, enough to be a problem for the meeting. Suddenly the electricity went out, and Duclos was worried. She needed electricity to run her PowerPoint slide show and preach her sermon. After prayer, the electricity came back on, and all the bugs were gone.
Duclos is thrilled to find that her fear of preaching has turned into complete love for "her village" as she preached for a week and then watched as some of her listeners were baptized. Gregory Wilkinson, a senior from Roseburg, Ore., also preached in a village and made home visits. He noticed how much less the people there have in their homes, but they still made him feel welcome.
Seth Moturi, a junior from Lebanon, Ore., has just been excited to actually be doing what you always hear of others doing: preaching sermons, visiting homes, praying with people, then actually seeing them baptized.
Moturi summed it up for most of the group when he called home and said, "I can’t believe I’m doing this!"
Milo's mission group sports the traditional clothing of India, where they preached and presented a Vacation Bible School during spring break. (Hilde Barrera)
