Students Take Off for Overseas Service

Five Westmont students will fly out of Los Angeles today to spend a month serving people in Indonesia in one of four student-led Emmaus Road trips. Twenty-five students will participate this summer.

A service project to Nigeria had to be cancelled this week due to a surge in criminal activity in the country and extensive travel warnings. College officials hope to redirect the group to another African country.

Students began planning Emmaus Road projects about 10 years ago, although students have participated in World Missions week and short-term missions since the 1960s. Cross-cultural service projects have a unique and life-changing impact on students who participate.

Students will also travel to Cambodia and Ukraine to teach English, serve at orphanages and work on other projects.

Participants are responsible for raising the funds for the service projects, which range in cost from $2,000 to $3,500 per person.

A group will serve in Indonesia for the third time. Elena Yee, director of intercultural programs, says a college friend extended an invitation to students to visit the islands off of Southeast Asia.

“He and a friend have started a new eco-tourism business as a means to serve the community in meaningful and helpful ways as directed by local leaders,” Yee says.

Megan Griffith, who graduated this month, went on the first trip to Indonesia two summers ago.

“I loved my experience there,” she says. “It was one of the most valuable things I’ve done at Westmont.”

She was a core team member and began preparing for this summer’s trips last fall. The co-leaders are Ali Osborn and Joe Henry and participants include Lauren Brown, Garrett Inouye and Jay Tagliareni.

This is Henry’s first service project and he says he’s not sure what to expect.

“I hope to not come back the same person but obtain a more holistic view of God’s kingdom and his people,” he says.

Osborn says she’s hoping to gain a better understanding of the Indonesian culture and religious practices.

“I want to see the different ways in which God moves because we can be so closed minded and stuck in our little Westernized Christian world,” she says.

She hopes the cultural adjustments won’t be tricky.

“We’ve been told not to touch members of the opposite sex, point, or touch children on the head,” she says.

For updated information on all 4 of this summer's trips, the students keep blogs found here.