Urban Mission Trips (Refugees) - Registration has opened for Summer 2009 mission trips to locations across the globe, and keeping in mind the huge help it provides in planning such service trips, this year Experience Mission is offering some special incentives to those teams that register by September 30.

Also in preparation for next year’s trips and in a continued expansion of its burgeoning ministry, EM hopes to establish three new partner community relationships for trips to New Mexico, Honduras and Belize.

If the planned site in New Mexico does become an EM partner community, it would be the second on the expansive Navajo Nation, which sprawls across that state as well as Arizona, Utah and Nevada. EM currently offers trips to Inscription House, Arizona – the site of the New Testament Indian Gospel Church.

“We just realized the value of that cultural experience and the need there, and we want to expand work on the Navajo reservation, because it encompasses more than just the state of Arizona,” EM Executive Director Chris Clum said.

Clum explained that EM trips center around partner community leaders. They are the full-time missionaries on the ground year round, reaching out to nearby residents and demonstrating God’s love.

“Our existing contacts on the Navajo reservation, they really get it. They're a huge blessing for us,” he said.

Potential partner community leaders in Honduras and Belize have yet to be identified. However, both of the tiny nations are fraught with hunger and homelessness.

“We are committed to working in Central America, and there have been some great opportunities that have opened up,” Clum said. “We are anxious to see if those doors open up and fit right and whether the philosophy matches and it's really something we can make a long-term commitment to.”

With an unemployment rate approaching 30 percent, Honduras is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere. And despite rich natural resources and the lowest population density in Central America, Belize has an ever-growing poverty level and dilapidated infrastructure.

Trips to locations like these, Clum said, represent the first steps in a long-term commitment to sending missionaries to the most distraught corners of the world. EM staff members are visiting both potential sites this week to se whether they are, in fact, viable mission locations. They’ll post their progress in a blog on Experiencemissionnews.com and issue a final report for the next month’s edition of eNews.