Despite the sweat, grime, and heat they encountered while doing mission work in Guadalajara, about seventy teens from four U.S. states left Mexico feeling blessed and just a little guilty about the extravagances they enjoy in the United States.
"It's like a blessing to me to be helping them," said George Ferguson, a teen from Anderson Mill Road Baptist Church, Spartanburg, S.C. "I could have gone to the beach this week, but I chose to come here. It's rewarding to know that instead of doing what could have been more fun, I came and did what is actually going to do a lot more for me in the long run."
Co-sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention and the SBC International Mission Board, M-Fuge International is a weeklong camp for youth, grades 10 through college. M-Fuge International events were held this summer in Wales, Venezuela, England, France, and Mexico. Next year they will be held in five cities in Wales, Guadalajara, Mexico; Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Kingston, Canada; and possibly Paris, France, and Amsterdam.
"The camps give kids a taste of missions in other countries and help them know whether they want to become a bigger part of missions in the future," said Rick Jenkins, IMB strategy coordinator for Western Mexico, who helped arrange the events.
The camps are designed to challenge youth to a new and deeper relationship with Christ and incorporate a teenager's need for activity, fellowship, and spiritual growth with their desire to learn, said Mark Robbins, M-Fuge International coordinator for LifeWay. The Bible study curriculum is built around activities and games, resulting in stronger group relationships and a better application of spiritual truths, he added.
Kids from churches in South Carolina, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Wyoming lived from June 15-22 in Camp La Roca, about twenty miles south of central Guadalajara. Mission activities included: painting, construction, Vacation Bible School, sports and recreation, creative ministries, and community projects.
Ferguson, who spent his week in Guadalajara painting walls at Iglesia Bautista Filadelfia, said even his grungy living quarters gave him a better perspective on how many of the poorer people in Mexico live.
"The dorms are not the nicest places to live ever, but they are tolerable," Ferguson said. "You get used it, and it helps you realize more how the Mexican people live here. Now I see how they live every day, and they don't get to go home to their big nice houses and cars."
Lisa Schroeder, Allison Hansen, and Samantha Swaney of North Cheyenne Baptist Church, Cheyenne, Wyo., spent time with children in a small village near Iglesia Bautista Lirio de los Valles (Lily of the Valley Baptist Church) making crafts, performing skits and puppetry, and singing songs in Spanish and English.
"It was great. I had so much fun. I got to play with little kids all day, and I usually don't like that," Schroeder said. "It was really neat to see how open and sweet the people were. And it was a really cool blessing to share a message across a language barrier like that because I speak, like, three words of Spanish."
Jarod Caranta, a youth from First Baptist Church, Farmington, N.M., said the way he acquired the money for his trip convinced him God wanted him to go to Guadalajara. The week before he left on the trip, Caranta had only raised $400 of the $950 he needed to go.
"So I started praying, I mean, I got down on my knees and said, 'God, I need some help. You know I really want to go.'"
Within a week, Caranta learned his church was giving him $250 raised during a golf tournament; and he made the rest moving furniture.
"Of course I feel God was bringing me here, and it's been worth it," Caranta said.
For more information about M-Fuge International, visit the LifeWay site: www.lifeway.com/fuge/ls_mfuge_intl.asp.
M-Fuge Stats
Approximately18,000 M-Fuge participants ministered in the U.S.
Approximately 1,500 participated in International M-Fuge.
More than 500 made decisions for the Lord as a result of M-Fuge efforts in the U.S.
(As of this printing, decisions for the Lord had not been tabulated from international sites.)
