Top InterVarsity Leaders Visit ''Poorest of the Poor'' Overseas

Nine senior leaders of InterVarsity, including president Alec Hill, will visit two of the poorest communities in Cairo, Egypt. And for the first time, the top leaders will visit the students working on overseas missions.

Today, nine senior leaders of a campus ministry will go abroad to visit groups of American students, who have chosen to complete short-term missions trips called the Global Urban Trek.

On a week-long tour, the delegation, including the president of InterVarsity, Alec Hill, will visit the students working in two of the poorest communities in Cairo, Egypt -- the Sudanese refugee camps and the "garbage collectors community."

For the Christian campus fellowship, this is the first time that a delegation of senior leaders will have ever visited students on overseas missions.

The importance of the "Trek" is not to be understated, according to Scott Bessenecker, Director of the program. Living among the people and building relationships with them can open channels for the message of Christ to be made known, he said.

"In the midst of the program, they develop really really close friendships," he said. It doesn't matter what they're studying."

"If our students are being salty in the way they live, their friends begin to get salty in the way they live," siad Bessenecker, alluding to Bible verse Matthew 3:13.

For some students, the Trek may be a precursor to a life of missions work.

It is about "opening up an opportunity for God to call some of us to go and spend our lives among the poor as his couriers of hope. But most importantly, we can lean into Christ as he speaks to us on how he wants us to spend the remainder of our lives," stated Bessenecker.

Each summer, about 30 - 40 percent of the participants respond by pledging at least two years to serve the urban poor. Many will go on to spend their lives among them.

Other than Cairo, Egypt, the program includes a few other cities, where students not only will minister to, but also learn from the poorest of the poor, such as Bangkok, Thailand, Manila, Philippines, and Mexico City, Mexico.

Students Record Their Experiences

"Saturday night as we rode the metro home from a museum, I stood next to a shirtless boy, about 15 years old. He faced away from me and stared out the doors of the train, his back completely covered with deep scratches, scars and sores. He was a drug addict, his sores induced from the self abuse of falling onto glass and pavement while strung out on inhalants and other drugs."

"Sometimes this city feels warm and alive, but when I stand on the metro with poverty and sickness, these people feel forgotten," wrote Rachel Telehany on June 29, 2005.

Rachel is a journalism student from the University of Alabama writing while on a Global Urban Trek in Mexico City.

For Rachel, the cultural difference has opened her eyes.

"God is teaching me a lot about the ministry of presence and building relationships instead of houses," she wrote, noting her own tendency to desire to do rather than to relate.

Another student, Jenny Beach, found herself coming to love the Thai people while on her Global Urban Trek in Bangkok.

"Before I left for Thailand a friend asked me, 'Jenny, what if you fall in love over there?' " she wrote on her "Trek" journal on June 21, 2005.

"With disbelief I said, 'That’s not what I’m going for.' ”

She continued, "With each passing day I find myself loving these people more and more."

To her surprise, the Indiana University student found genuine faith in the people.

"I think what has really caused me to love these people is their genuine worship," she wrote. "There is one girl in particular … she is just loving God with her whole heart."

Jenny also found that they were genuine towards her and admitted her humility.

"The way they are so gracious and concerned with our well-being speaks volumes to me. It’s kind of difficult to think of us being here and us being the ones that are served when we came to serve others."

For more information, visit www.globalurbantrek.org.