This past year has given us at Adventures in Missions an even deeper commitment to the mission God set before us as an organization: to awaken and activate Christ followers worldwide to their identity and role in God’s Kingdom. While COVID-19 has affected each of us, our ministry partners are living and working in communities that are severely impacted, struggling financially and looking for hope. Our partners are ready, eager and prepared for teams to come and help as they serve their communities.

In March 2020, as borders started to close without much notice, Adventures worked around the clock to safely bring home 570 participants from 26 international squads over the course of 6 days. We spent the rest of the year canceling and postponing trips, while working hard to create a variety of opportunities that adhere to government regulations and safety guidelines. We found ways to launch domestic trips and host a 4-month extended training camp on campus for our 2020 Gap Year Racers. We have equipped our leaders and teams and are effectively managing COVID-19 realities, both on our campus and for our participants around the world.

With a desire to launch internationally in January, we talked to experts, researched the recommendations from the CDC and other organizations, assessed possible locations (with information about entry requirements and how they were handling COVID-19 internally), and generally continued to watch the pandemic situation both in the U.S. and overseas. As potential locations began to appear viable we worked with those ministry hosts to develop an on-field COVID-19 protocol that would minimize risk to our participants and to those they serve.

As a result, In January 2021, we were able to safely launch over 300 participants internationally, across 8 World Race squads and 3 Semesters teams. The Gospel is being shared, work is getting done, and God is moving (check out some stories here!).

In the fall of 2021 we have seen entry requirements around the world change quickly and dramatically as countries, businesses and ministry hosts have begun treating vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers differently. This has profound implications for our route, location and ministry options. For several months we have been communicating our expectation that this would happen at some point and we have told our participants to hold their anticipated locations lightly since they are subject to change.

We now have a better understanding of how these new restrictions impact the mission trip experience. Unvaccinated travelers will have fewer route options, they will spend more time in quarantine and their movement in and out of businesses, gatherings and ministry within a country may be very restricted.

We do not require our participants to be vaccinated, and we are working to continue to provide options for unvaccinated travelers. However, the impact on their experience may be substantial and some options will very likely be unavailable to them.

We continue to move forward with expectancy, wisdom, and intentionality as we pioneer in a world that looks different than the one we were navigating a year ago for the sake of the Gospel. Now, more than ever, our world needs hope.