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May Event Will Train Students for South American Missions Adventure

by Allie Martin
May 6, 2005

(AgapePress) - Thanks to a partnership between two sponsoring ministries, college students from across the U.S. will have an opportunity not only to attend a missions conference but also, promptly thereafter, to get hands-on experience on the mission field.

Global Missions Fellowship (GMF), along with MaxPoint Ministries, is sponsoring a special training seminar in Dallas at the end of May. A thousand college students from across the U.S. will head to Texas for two days of training and worship through the initiative called "Collegiate Quest." After that, the student-missionaries will head directly to one of four South American nations for a week of missions work.

GMF's Frank Banfill, one of the organizers of Collegiate Quest, describes the unique program as "more than a worship event and more than a missions trip." He says the students coming to Dallas will get to enjoy a time of training, ministry, and mission as well as an unforgettable worship concert experience.

"Then," Banfill adds, "unlike so many conferences, instead of just going home and doing nothing, we're actually going to send them right out to the mission field. They're going to go to one of four different countries and will be there during the week ... sharing their faith, doing evangelism and discipleship, working with local churches."

The students will have the chance to minister in Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, or Venezuela, the Collegiate Quest representative points out. "And then they'll come back at the end of that," he says, "back to Dallas, where they'll have a chance to debrief and share their stories."

Banfill recalls that when the Lord gave him the vision for an event like Collegiate Quest a year and a half ago, he was "just praying through and just thinking about the whole concept of how can we better mobilize college students -- how can we really help them turn their desires and their passion into something very practical."

The GMF spokesman says his desire was to take the excitement of conferences and training that students would enjoy attending, "but then actually make it something that they live out and experience, and that's where Collegiate Quest is coming from." The training and missions event is open to graduating high school seniors or college aged adults.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.

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