You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
INTERNS<br />
One way to ensure<br />
short term mission is<br />
built on solid foundations,<br />
is the concept<br />
of being an intern.<br />
SIM offers several<br />
examples of this.<br />
Mission partners can<br />
go out for several<br />
months, a year or<br />
two years, and as<br />
they experience mission<br />
in a team, they<br />
do a course of study.<br />
Far from being<br />
‘just a trip’, an internship<br />
is a serious<br />
commitment. Participants<br />
live amongst<br />
the people they have<br />
gone to serve, learning<br />
their culture at<br />
grassroots level. For<br />
example, in India or<br />
Bangladesh, Bolivia,<br />
China or out in<br />
the bush in Niger,<br />
the interns learn the<br />
language and work<br />
under the mentorship<br />
of a seasoned<br />
missionary. Unlike<br />
a once-over-lightly<br />
short term trip,<br />
they are expected<br />
to make significant<br />
friendships with<br />
local people.<br />
Is it time for<br />
L<br />
ast November out in the backblocks,<br />
a Nigerien chief came to visit his<br />
neighbour, W, the senior leader of a team<br />
of seven interns who had been meeting for<br />
Team Day. Each day lately the chief had<br />
been coming by to discuss his ‘problem’.<br />
This day he had questions about Deftere<br />
Allah (God’s book).<br />
Earlier in the week he had announced:<br />
“My children are worried that their father<br />
is going to leave his religion. They worry<br />
about the shame it will bring, and ask ‘Who<br />
will follow you, who will bury you, if you<br />
turn away to follow another way?’”<br />
W says, “Each day as we shared food,<br />
either at our place or in his hut, he would<br />
ask me to pray and thank God for the food.”<br />
This was the first time since they knew him<br />
he had done this - “When you pray, God<br />
listens,” the chief said.<br />
Then T, a local believer from the same<br />
language group and culture made one of his<br />
occasional visits to W’s family, and the chief<br />
was excited to come and talk to him, explaining,<br />
“A few nights ago I was in my hut<br />
alone and I prayed to God to show which is<br />
the better way. Should I keep following the<br />
religion that I’ve been following all my life<br />
or is the other way the true way? That night<br />
I had a dream in which God showed me<br />
the true way. I don’t want to follow my old<br />
religion any more.”<br />
On the same visit, T was taken to meet<br />
another man from this community who<br />
had believed through another’s witness a<br />
number of years ago, but had never known<br />
how to openly live as a believer among his<br />
4
Change language