Short-term missions on increase

USA (MNN) — The SARS outbreak in Asia and threats of war in Iraq hit short-term missions hard early last year. However, that trend won’t be continuing this year, according to SEND International’s short term mission department.

SEND International’s Dave Tucker says, “There was just an uneasiness to travel and we saw a definitely saw a decline in the number of individuals and teams we were sending out short term.”

Tucker says that’s no longer the case. “This year, we’ve already seen an upturn. (It) looks like we’re working with twice as many teams already, and twice as many individuals that are going out all over the world,” says Tucker.

The need is even greater this year. Since many of their trip were canceled that meant, “that many of the projects just were not done at all. So, this is going to be a definite help to both financially and ministry wise in getting things done this year.”

SEND has a number of projects they need help with. 10 to 20 teams are needed in Ukraine for VBS type camps, evangelism teams are needed in Croatia, East Asia has need of teams to teach English as a second language, and Russia has need of construction teams.

For information on these and other trips, go to our Short-Term Missions Database at STMDB.org.