By: Madelynn Brower
Since 1967, Southern Adventist University has been sending student missionaries to countries around the world. This year, the university has added new locations in Uganda and the Fiji Islands.
One of the new mission locations in Uganda is located near the western border, between Uganda and Congo. This mission, titled OurGanda, serves 13 remote mountain villages in the Bundibugyo area, offering medical help and support. Most of the students who travel on this mission are pre-medicine and nursing students who train with groups of local doctors in the OurGanda clinics. This year, four student missionaries from Southern work at OurGanda.
Student missionary Ana Korac shared her experience in an email to the Accent.
“Each clinic, we start with an educational presentation (the four of us students have been presenting on nutrition) and then we act out a Bible story for them, as well,” she stated. “Then, we are divided up, either to do triage, to shadow the medical officers and doctors or to help dispense the medications at the pharmacy station.”
In addition to providing medical aid, OurGanda has an ongoing mission to help prevent child and spousal abuse among remote villages. According to Byard Parks, director of student missions at Southern, OurGanda has often found unique measures to do so, including working with the local government to help enforce Ugandan laws against domestic violence. Their efforts have led to the formation of the ManKind Club, an anti-abuse club for formerly abusive husbands among the mountain villages, which now has over a thousand members. Similar efforts are being taken to help prevent child abuse.
The second new location is in the Fiji Islands, where student missionaries are sent to one of the main islands first, then by boat to another smaller island an hour away. This smaller island is home to a Seventh-day Adventist school, where missionaries work with health clinics, teach at the school and do evangelistic outreach.
Parks stated that this year the university has 65 missionaries around the world and hopes to continue growing that number. He also said that while foreign exchange students cannot go as student missionaries due to difficulties getting back into the country, many students from Southern are still willing to serve overseas.
“[A] high priority is that students are in [a] location where they receive mentoring and gain personal growth,” said Parks. “SM [Student missionary] life is transformational.”
Some of the most popular student missionary destinations include the islands of Micronesia, Riverside Farm Institute in Zambia and locations in Bolivia.
According to Parks, there are always new places that need more volunteers.
“Every week I get about two phone calls or two emails from some Adventist organization that’s looking for volunteers. … That’s a hundred a year,” he said.
Among the available mission fields are schools, orphanages and other humanitarian sites around the world.
Parks also requested continued prayers for the mission work of Southern.
“[Pray that] the mission understanding and spirit on Southern’s campus could grow to undertake new types of work in unreached and hard areas of the world.”
