Embark program encourages taking a gap-period for missions

International (MNN) — Are you in a transitional place of life and asking God what’s next? If so, spending a gap-period in missions may be a great way to put your faith into action. Trans World Radio is looking for people to join their short-term missions program called Embark!

(Photo courtesy of Open Doors USA)

Alan Lawton with TWR explains, “Our short-term program is for people who maybe have already graduated, haven’t found a job yet, but are looking for something to test their skills in missions, or they want to get some experience — or even people that have kind of finished one career and they’re ready to step into a second career and see if this is where God is leading them.”

Trips can range anywhere from two months to a year, says Lawton, “and the reason that is, is because it takes people a few weeks just to adjust to a new culture, and we really want them to be able to use their gifts and talents to make an impact…. People can go all over the world with TWR into Asia, Africa, [and] Europe and serve with our teams there.”

The Embark trips are also a great way to “get your feet wet” in international missions if it’s something you’re considering long-term. They can also use people with creative arts talents or technical skills.

“Whether it’s videography or audio production, people who have talents in the areas of administration like accounting or human resources or mobilization, or people in technical areas, even…people with electrical, mechanical, [or] engineering degrees to go to work with our transmitter teams around the world.”

Lawton says one of TWR’s goals with Embark is to make engaging in missions a greater possibility for those who feel called. One hesitancy he says many have with joining missions “is the support raising. They feel the tug on their heart from the Lord to use their gifts and talents in missions, but they always seem to get scared when it comes down to raising the support and going overseas. That’s one of the beautiful things about Embark is we’ve set it up where people can raise the minimum amount of support — just enough to cover their travel and…their housing and their food allowances basically.

“The end goal is to bring the message of the Gospel to people all over the world, people in difficult-to-reach areas like the 10/40 Window, North Africa, and the Arabic countries to the people in North Korea and Venezuela. There’s very little missionary activity taking place in North Korea, obviously, but our message of the Good News can go out from our transmitter site in Guam, so engineers working in Guam can make it possible for people in North Korea to hear the Gospel. The end result is to build the Kingdom of God and to bring people to Christ, and that happens by them hearing the Good News and responding to it.”

Want to learn more? Just click here to get started at TWR’s website! “Then they would just fill out a simple interest profile that would put them in touch with us and give us some basic information and then we’d give them a call to kind of start that process moving forward.”