Students will partner with the Wheaton College Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Campo Amor, which is a network of dozens of house churches that participate in holistic ministry in their communities. The church often focuses on the term diakonia, the emphasis of helping one another in the family of God. Visitors to Camp Amor will be welcomed by a warm, vibrant community of faith who genuinely enjoy building friendships with guests. They will serve and share among these brothers and sisters in Christ, and also enjoy their cultural traditions, such as cafecitos and dancing
Wheaton College has a long history of sending students around the world in missions and service work. These experiences have been at the initiation of students responding to various needs and crisis around the world. Student Missionary Partners continues this work in organizing trips during the school year and summer!
Spring Break Trips
Chinle Planting Hope (CPH) works to bring hope and empowerment to families and communities on the Navajo Nation through a holistic community center. CPH began to build relationships and community by giving back to the community together. The vision of their community center includes their Elder Relief Food Bank, R.E.A.D in Beauty Bookmobile, H.O.P.E Community Thrift Store, community garden, bike repair shop, playground, and walking track. CPH practices asset based community development, building off the natural leaders and ancient wisdom of the Diné community and people while addressing needs with dignity. Students will serve alongside the CPH team members in their projects, live alongside them, and learn about the Diné community and their beautiful land.
His Mansion Ministries is a Christ-centered residential recovery community that works to minister the love of Christ to see peoples’ lives transformed. His Mansion works with young adults ages 18-35 in a year-long recovery program, helping them find freedom from addiction through a relationship with Jesus. Residents experience restored lives through authentic relationships, formational learning, Christ-centered counseling, and a healthy work ethic, including harvesting from their garden and preparing meals together. His Mansion’s beautiful property is located in south-central New Hampshire, where you can find a working farm with livestock and gardens as well as various facilities such as men’s and women’s dorm buildings, a chapel, a multi-purpose building, and staff family homes. Students will join the His Mansion Residents, Servant Leaders, and Staff in their work crews and live, converse, eat, and worship alongside them. All students are invited, especially those who wish to serve in ministry in the future or are skilled in carpentry.
Students will have the opportunity to witness what the Lord is doing in Mexico City by partnering with various organizations. Students will be able to experience the culture of Mexico City through visiting markets, meeting locals, going to an anthropology museum, going to church, and eating out. The team will specifically partner with Milamex, which is run by a former Wheaton alumna. Students will learn about the ministries of Milamex, including their choir, publishing of Christian content, a program about Christ-centered health, and their guesthouse. Students will also be able to engage with Brave Heart Collective, which serves vulnerable communities and migrants in Mexico City through activities and programs for both children and adults that aim for educational, recreational, and spiritual development.
Wheaton College’s Correctional Ministries Institute Spring Break SMP trip will expose students to the realities of life behind bars, not what the media portrays, and provide opportunities to interact with men and women transitioning back into the community. Participants will be able to describe the corrections system and issues, interact with those who are justice-involved, and describe a Biblical restorative justice alternative.
Skivangelism is partnering with Student Missionary Partners to bring Wheaton College its first spring break trip designed specifically for bringing together inner city and snowsports ministry! Students will spend three days in downtown Vancouver with YWAM, experiencing their Missions Adventure program which includes an Urban Plunge, Temple Tour, and volunteer work at city centers. Skivangelism will also spend three days doing evangelism at various mountains in the Fitzsimmons Range in Canada.
Summer Trips
In North Africa, students will have the opportunity to engage in ministry to unreached Muslims through Business as Missions (BAM). Students will also be given the opportunity to take language classes and visit cities to become more immersed in the culture. Business and entrepreneurship support provides the context for meaningful relationships with local Arabs and opportunities for sharing Jesus. Students will be able to provide operational and administrative support to a newly-launched co-working space, and help local entrepreneurs apply start-up training and business strategies within the community.
One Collective is a global ministry organization that is currently serving Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. One Collective’s ministry in Lusaka includes discipleship, business training and empowerment, working at a medical clinic, education, youth, marriage, and women’s ministries. Students will partner with One Collective and engage in their “Integrated Community Transformation” approach, which seeks holistic change by blending reproducible disciple-making & asset-based community development. Students will have opportunities to engage in ministry to at-risk youth, vulnerable women, and social business activities throughout the community through women’s empowerment programs, working alongside an established school, youth ministry events and other activities. Students will live at a guest house or with the missionaries in town, not far from the ministry and educational centers, work alongside staff and community members, and have weekly discipleship meetings during their time in Zambia.
In the Middle East, students will be encouraged to live out the Gospel in their daily life and enter culture and relationships boldly curious as a learner, as well as invest in others to catalyze discipleship relationships and build missional relationships with the trusted, well-established missionaries and national partners. Each student will be paired with a missionary mentor who will walk alongside them in their journey and help them discern where God may be leading them. This trip is designed for students exploring the potential for a career in missions after college and is crafted to expose students to the real Middle East with all its beauty, challenges, and opportunity. Students will work alongside a team of missionaries in places where the gospel is not known, be trained in situational awareness, and introduced to best practice security measures for missionaries in creative access countries. As part of their educational enrichment, students will take Arabic classes, culture classes, and a brief course on Islam. This learning will directly serve to equip students as they help to run the partners’ English center and coffee shop, which engages Muslim students practicing their English. Additionally, students will meet Arab church leaders, visit refugee homes, attend lectures relevant to missions in the Middle East, meet and pray for missionaries serving in the Middle East, learn the basic political and theological issues that are important to Muslim ministry, and much more. This ministry experience is for learning, and it’s for rubbing shoulders with real people in real life doing what it takes to establish the church in new places.
In Southeast Asia, students will engage in a Business as Missions (BAM) model in the hospitality industry. This particular BAM ministry is dedicated to spreading the gospel among an unreached people group in Southeast Asia and bringing sustainable, positive impact to employees, the ecosystem, and local economy. During their two-months, students will not only lend their skills to a purposeful project but will also dedicate time to language acquisition. Moreover, they'll delve into the intricacies of a BAM operation, observe pivotal decision-making procedures, and learn the art of connecting with unreached and unengaged people groups. This immersive experience entails spending time both within the business environment and on remote islands, living with host families, and fully immersing themselves in the subsistence lifestyle of the local fishing communities. The opportunity is tailored for adventurous students ready to fully embrace life rhythms of both the city and remote villages. To thrive in this experience, students should have a passion for adventure, a desire for cultural & culinary exploration, adaptability, and an eagerness to go with the flow of everyday life. Beyond the adventure, student participation plays a pivotal role in advancing the partner organization’s two-decade-long mission to reach unreached and unengaged communities.
Prosperous Youth Foundation (PYF) was founded to support youth homes and orphanages across the city of Chiang Mai in the Phetchabun mountain range in northern Thailand. PYF serves hundreds of children and young adults from the city and surrounding villages housed youth homes and orphanages in the city. Students will have the opportunity to teach English through creative storytelling, bible stories, and conversation partners with Thai college students. Students will also run camps and respite days for orphanage staff, worship with PYF and their partners across the city, and engage in the other existing ministries at PYF. Students will live at Faithful Heart, a home for Thai students from the mountain villages, some of them graduates from the local youth homes, who are attending college in Chiang Mai. The city, the second largest in Thailand, was the ancient capital of the Kingdom of LanNa and is densely Buddhist. Students will have regular and often intense exposure to the religious culture, guided by the city’s small but strong Christian community.
Intermission Youth Hostel is a summer hostel operated by Laget Vest, a local Christian university organization located in Bergen, Norway. Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population near 300,000 people. The town is known for its many universities as well as its port, the busiest in Norway, for both commercial and tourist business. Intermission is a hostel ministry that aims to serve the backpacking community through hospitality. Students will first walk the Camino de Santiago, a famous pilgrimage route in Spain, for 7-10 days where they will walk alongside fellow pilgrims and stay in multiple albergues. After completion of the Camino, students will then fly to Bergen. They will be responsible for setting up Intermission and making the space open and welcoming. Once the hostel opens, students will be responsible for general cleaning and upkeep of the hostel, keeping track of hostel bookings, checking guests in, and engaging in spiritual conversations with guests. Students will have the chance to host weekly waffle and movie nights, organize group hikes and city tours, as well as any other opportunities they wish to provide for guests.
In Spain, students will engage in two ministries of One Collective: Pilgrim House and APOTHECA. Pilgrim House is a welcome center located in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, for backpackers freshly off the Camino de Santiago, a walking pilgrimage with various routes ultimately leading to the Cathedral of Saint James. Santiago has a population of only 100,000 people, but the town swells with 200,000 pilgrims visiting each year. Most of the local industry is focused on tourists. The center was founded to be a space of reflection and rest “for the engaged heart and searching soul” of pilgrims who need an inviting and hospitable environment to process their time on the trail. APOTHECA is a nonprofit seeking to care for the local, residential community of Santiago through community development work. Students will first walk a portion of the Camino, engaging in the rhythmic act of traveling the same path as the one the pilgrims they meet will have taken. After arriving in Santiago, they will split their time between serving at the welcome center alongside Pilgrim House staff to lead Camino debriefs and reflections and to welcome pilgrims into their final destination with biblical hospitality and kindness and serving with APOTHECA in a local grocery store and artisanal soap-making workshops to empower women and foster meaningful conversations.
Christ for the City International, founded in 1995, is a multinational organization dedicated to empowering local missionaries to spread the Gospel message in impoverished urban areas, uplifting the under-resourced communities of Tirrases and Los Guido with both material aid and the love of God. CPCI strives to break the cycle of poverty through holistic development initiatives that support employment, education, and the prevention of violence. The Costa Rican team serves through various transformation centers in the capital city of San José and its surrounding area with medical clinics, sports ministry, leading devotionals, teaching ESL classes to all ages, tutoring, women’s recovery centers, and youth programs. Students will serve alongside missionaries in a ministry center in local neighborhoods. Students should expect to pray for and learn from the residents there. A variety of skill sets can be utilized in this ministry, specifically relational ministry. Students will either live in the main administrative center of CPCI or in the home of the local missionary families.
The team of students working with Warm Heart Community in Mexico will be working in one of the largest metropolises in the world–Mexico City. There, the team will be a part of amazing opportunities to be involved in the historic and artistic hub that is the Coyoacan community. Warm Heart, which is a ministry within Milamex, describes themselves as a place where people can explore who they are and who they want to become. For students wanting to be a part of a creative environment catered towards exploring their interests, this is a wonderful place to be. At this guesthouse, guests can be in community with each other through learning languages, watching movies, playing board games, doing yoga, cooking delicious food, creating art, and getting to meet and spend time with both local Mexicans and people who come to volunteer from all around the world. The Warm Heart hosts love encouraging people to cultivate and use their abilities to serve others through putting on events that raise awareness about social issues and to help people explore ways they can walk in step with those in need. They are passionate about serving faith-based non-profits through designing websites, making videos, and using their imagination to think outside the box and support causes in innovative ways! Everyday life in this hostel will look like living in community with fellow travelers, facilitating spiritual reflection for backpackers, getting to help run the guesthouse’s cafe, checking in and giving tours to visitors, assisting in cleaning, and being a part of planning events that bring communities together.
Living and Learning International is a ministry and education organization with a location in Quito, Ecuador. Living and Learning International trains youth workers in the local church and runs internships for North American college students. Students will have the opportunity to support Living and Learning’s partners across the city. Quito has a long history as a pre-columbian and spanish city. Its population is more than 2.5 million people. Some students will work in a community health clinic, observing medical practice in an international setting to gain an understanding of international medicine and medical practices. Others will work in a micro-business entrepreneurial setting or as a teacher's aid in a small faith-based K-12 school which serves a specific under-resourced community within Quito. Students will engage with education or ministry programs alongside staff and community members and live with a host family, immersed in the rich culture of Ecuador’s mountainous capital.