USA (MNN) — College students from the United States are getting experience in missions work and they didn’t have to travel half way around the world to do it. Here’s Life Inner City, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, is facilitating this experience.
Here’s Life’s President Ted Gandy says it’s called, “Summer in the City.” He says, “This is an opportunity that we have to recruit college students to come in and intern for eight weeks into the summer (in) seven cities, to work with our inner city partners and reach out to the poor, both adults and children.”
130 students are participating in the outreach program this summer. Gandy says, “We divide them up into teams of five and they do a lot of street evangelism. We have what we call our Gospel bracelets where they share with children. They’ll go into a drug rehab center and help out there. It’s mostly evangelism that they’re involved in.”
While evangelism is important, Gandy says the program exists for another reason. “To expose these college students to opportunities to serve the Lord in an urban area among the poor. Many have gone on to decide they want to teach in an inner city situation. Some have come on staff with Here’s Life, or with other missions.”
While the students raise two-thirds of their support, Here’s Life raises the rest. Your gift of $62 can help a student share the Gospel with people from all over the world.
Gandy says people in inner cities are fields just waiting for harvest. “I find the inner city is always extremely open to the Gospel. You don’t have to convince them they’re sinners, they know that. But, what they lack is real sense of hope. When these young people go in with their energy and talk about the hope that people can find in Christ, it’s incredibly a fertile place.”
