Faith Has several Global Outreach Partners on the island of Tenerife and often sends short-term teams there. Photo Courtesy of Jennifer Gentry.
Each summer, Faith Bible Church sends short-term teams to support our Gospel partners around the world. While only a small number can feasibly go, these teams are an expression of our unity in Christ with the global church. Whether sending or sent, we are all called to be partners in the Gospel with our brothers and sisters all around the world.
Even after they return, the teams’ testimonies also minister to those who sent them, further building up the local church. Faith members Grace McEachran and Jennifer Gentry both testify to the life-changing impact of serving on short-term teams.
“Everything they did was for the Lord”
Jennifer has gone four times with short-term teams supporting partners in Spain and Italy. She has helped five times (three in person and two virtually) with the Impacto summer outreach event put on by the church in Santa Ursula on the Spanish island of Tenerife. In 2022, she stayed the whole summer to work alongside Natalie Widman in Santa Ursula and with Pedro and Gasmelys Ruiz across the island in Adeje.
Jennifer first applied for a team at age 18, shortly after she became a believer in Christ. She was excited to see where God would take her life: “I was just super eager to serve in any capacity.”
On her first trip, Jennifer went to Tenerife in 2018 on a team helping with Impacto. The outreach in the town’s plaza included music, Bible stories, English lessons, games, and crafts – ingredients for “Gospel noise” to connect with people in the community and raise their curiosity.
Jennifer Gentry (Back row, middle) serves at Impacto, a community outreach put on by the church in Tenerife, in 2019. Photo Courtesy of Jennifer Gentry.
Each trip involved lots of preparation by the team, praying for the people they were reaching and “for our own hearts to be ready to serve, ready to be flexible, ready to do the work with a happy heart.” When the work got particularly long and exhausting, or she wasn’t feeling well (including having an ear infection on one trip), she remembers how vital it was to continue to pray for that happy heart.
As she served alongside the local believers, Jennifer’s understanding of God and His global church grew. She remembers thinking, “Whoa, God speaks Spanish!” It became real to her that people of completely different cultures, thousands of miles away from her home, believed the same things she did and knew the same God.
Her affection for the people and the churches in Tenerife also grew quickly. In fact, coming home to Spokane was hard each time: “I’m so connected to this, I have people now that I love and they’re in a different spot.” When she’s home, prayer is as important as ever, both as a ministry to her friends far away and as an attitude adjustment when she misses them and longs to be there. Prayer helps her remember it’s just as important to serve with a happy heart here at home.
Jennifer (left) with Global Outreach Partner Natalie Widman in Tenerife. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Gentry.
Working with the people in Tenerife has taught Jennifer the meaning of 1 Corinthians 11:1: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” She spent a lot of time with Natalie, who “sees life through a Gospel lens.” She stayed a month with the Ruizes, who were also a model of Gospel focus: “Their marriage, their relationship with their kids, their presence in the church … all of their perspectives were for the Lord. Everything they did was for the Lord. And I remember being really encouraged by that.”
So Jennifer tries to imitate them. She thinks of how Natalie is always looking for ways to show love to others. “Can I serve someone right now with something small to show the love of Christ to them, to show that I care about them? Even grabbing my roommate a cup of coffee or starting the teapot or something like that.”
The trips to Spain were also instrumental in directing Jennifer’s career. Shortly after starting college, she realized her original goal to be a nurse was not a good fit. But she had started taking Spanish classes because she wanted to be able to communicate better with her friends in Spain. Her Spanish teacher helped her redirect to study Spanish language and education, and now she is a high school Spanish teacher.
Will her language training be used for long-term global outreach in the future? Possibly.
“God has really put missions on my heart. And I’m continually praying about it … I’m willing to go where God sends me, if that’s here, or if that’s in Tenerife, or wherever it may be.”
“Everything is in His hands”
Grace traveled to Southeast Asia in June 2022 with a team sent to support an organization that connects with unreached people groups through eco-tourism. In their closed country, these partners have groups of foreign “tourists” travel with them into villages that may never have heard the Gospel before.
Grace, a college student studying to become an occupational therapist, was particularly suited for the physical challenges of such a trip. But at first she hesitated to apply because she feared the interview process and the embarrassment of potentially being rejected.
“I think I realized I was being prideful and not being willing to go into something that maybe the Lord is calling me to,” Grace says. Even if the interviewing elders told her to wait and pointed out areas where she needed to grow before she could join a team, “It’s a win-win. I’d be getting something out of it either way.”
Grace’s application was approved, and she went with a team of about eight Faith members. Through some uncomfortable travels and some sickness, the team found chances to apply Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Grace was struck by the closeness of fellowship she saw at the organization in Southeast Asia. All the workers – locals, expatriates, interns, and short-term visitors – live in the same place, eat meals together, and pray together multiple times a day, “living life-on-life to the max” because of their shared faith in Christ and their shared focus on taking the Gospel to unreached people.
Drawing together constantly in dependence on Christ brings the long-term workers through daily challenges at an intensely practical level. “It really did strengthen them,” she says. Even though the long-term workers also build sweet relationships with visitors, they aren’t as weighed down as you might expect when the visitors have to leave.
“One of the people there says, ‘I don’t ever miss people, because I know if they’re a believer, I’ll see them in heaven someday.’ And so I would say, ‘I’m going to miss you.’ And she would just be silent … because she has an eternal perspective of it.”
The 2022 Southeast Asia Team gathers in the airport on their journey overseas. Grace McEachran (fourth from the right) has her arm around friend and teammate Erin Dougherty. Photo courtesy of Grace McEachran.
Grace and her teammates stayed with local families and did prayer walks through the villages along with local interpreters. Their culture is extremely hospitable, and people often invite passers-by into their homes. That’s how she had a chance to share some of her own testimony and see which people were open to talking about spiritual things; those were the people the long-term workers would follow up with later.
Intentional times of prayer, sometimes while walking, is a habit that Grace brought back to the U.S. And even if someone asks what she’s doing talking out loud by herself, she figures it’s a chance to talk to them about Jesus.
But Grace is more than ready to go back to Southeast Asia if her studies allow it. She trusts God’s timing to lead her just as He led their team. “He holds our safety, our health, our lives, everything is in His hands. And whatever happens, I can just trust Him with that.”
If you want to pursue going with a short-term team, first and foremost, pray. Consult an elder or another mature believer who will pray with you and help you navigate the question humbly. “Just be praying for the Lord’s will,” Jennifer says.
