Stories about missions, by volunteers who have been there Every year, more than 100,000 people serve in the United Methodist Volunteers In Mission programs. Walter and Betty Whitehurst, longtime leaders in the program, have gathered the thoughts and comments of several dozen long-term individual volunteers and presented them in this compelling book. Truly a kaleidoscope of the Volunteers-in-Mission movement as told by the volunteers themselves. It offers a candid view of the joys, as well as the challenges and perils, of volunteers’ ministries. -H. Hasbrouck Hughes, Jr., Bishop (Retired), The United Methodist Church From hundreds of stories, touching people and places around the world, we learn something about who God is and how we are called to live lives that “become the Gospel.” This is a volume to be savored! -Harriett Jane Olson, Deputy General Secretary, Women’s Division/United Methodist Women Over the years, Walt and Betty Whitehurst have positively influenced and supported the lives of so many people. What a treasure they have given us to read and enjoy for ourselves! -Jeanie Blankenbaker, Assistant General Secretary, United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, Mission Volunteers (Retired) Walter A. Whitehurst and Betty C. Whitehurst have been at the forefront of volunteer mission efforts for United Methodists. They have led United Methodist Volunteers In Mission, Southeastern Jurisdiction, and served as consultants for Individual Volunteers for the General Board of Global Ministries. Walter is a retired clergy member of the Virginia Annual Conference, and Betty is a retired professor of Spanish.

Following God's Call

Individual Volunteers in MissionBy Betty C. Whitehurst

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2008 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-49109-4

Chapter One

The Individual Volunteer Program

In 1735, the Georgia Trustees asked John Wesley if he and some friends would go with James Oglethorpe to the new American colony of Georgia (named for the reigning monarch) as volunteer missionaries. —From the "Wesley in America" exhibit, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas, February 2003

Christian Love in Action," the motto of United Methodist Volunteers In Mission, is based on 1 John 3:18: "Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." Living our faith is at the very heart of our Christian calling and reflects the purpose that has grown out of our understanding of who we are and what it means to put our faith into practice.

History of the Individual Volunteer Program

United Methodism has a long history of volunteer missionaries, beginning with John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who answered God's call to travel to the colony of Georgia, where he had been invited by General James Oglethorpe to establish Anglican churches. After traveling to America, he learned Spanish in order to communicate with the Native Americans who had learned that language from the earlier Spanish explorers.

The individual volunteer program was started when some persons who had served on Volunteers In Mission teams said, "God is calling me to go by myself, not for two weeks, but for a longer time." As inquiries about how that could be done began to reach the jurisdictional UMVIM offices, a program was developed, beginning in the early 1990s, to enable persons to serve as individual volunteers for periods of two months or longer.

Others had felt God's call to mission for many years and were now ready to answer that call. As the program grew, the Southeastern Jurisdiction office of The United Methodist Church was asked to recruit, train, and place individual volunteers for the entire denomination.

By 1999 the program had expanded, and the Mission Volunteers program unit of the General Board of Global Ministries decided to sponsor the individual volunteer program for persons from the other jurisdictions in the United States and from other countries, while the Atlanta office continued to send volunteers from the Southeast.

In all this work, God has blessed the lives of many people through the service of individual volunteers. Even more, God has blessed those who have said, "Here I am, Lord. Send me."

Why Volunteer?

There are many reasons for volunteering. We will mention just a few, with stories and quotes from volunteers as illustrations.

1. "I Was Called to Be a Missionary, but ..."

Martha Oldham's story is typical of the volunteers who felt God's call at a young age but were not able to fulfill it until later in life. Martha has written a book, Africa: Lord, Hang Onto Me and Don't Let Go (Pleasant Word, 2004). The story of her call begins with these words:

As a small child, I felt a call to become a missionary.... I had always heard about my paternal grandpa Geyer's desire to be a missionary in Africa, a dream he never achieved.... As an adult, when I saw stories and pictures in the news showing children starving in places like Somalia and Rwanda, with refugees dying from cholera, my heart would break.... I wanted to go to those places and do something. (17–18) Martha's lifelong dream was fulfilled when she joined a volunteer team organized by the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) to work with Rwandan refugees in Bukavu, Zaire. Next was a trip to Kenya with Feed the Children, an international Christian organization based in Oklahoma City, and then to Ghana with a Volunteers In Mission team from Oklahoma. After those group experiences, she decided to apply for service as an individual volunteer in Rwanda, where she did outstanding work with women and girls who had been traumatized by the rapes, murders, and other atrocities of the genocidal war between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

2. "There's More to Life Than This ..."

When asked, "Why do you want to be an individual volunteer?" people often reply, "I've been so blessed that I want to give something back out of gratitude to God." Especially after being exposed to poverty through a Volunteers In Mission team experience, they realize there is more to life than material blessings and want to find true meaning in their lives through service to others. A statement we have often heard is "It's payback time."

A dramatic example is the story of Larry Cox, who went with a volunteer team to Chile, and upon seeing the difference that volunteers can make in people's lives, decided he wanted to spend the rest of his life making that kind of difference. Several years after Larry became a full-time volunteer, his daughter Marie wrote a paper that sums up what the volunteer experience is all about. She wrote:

My dad was the chief financial officer and senior vice president for a flourishing company in Dallas. Now many people find it hard to believe that my dad was once a shrewd businessman, a workaholic of sorts, who worked seven days a week and had time for little else. Consequently, my family was climbing the social scale and indulging in all the amenities that accompanied our incipient wealth. During this time, I was a happy fifth grader and I enjoyed the security of my life and family. I didn't know it, but my dad was not happy, not even close. He severely disliked the hypocrisy and tedium present in his job.... Perhaps the reason my father rejected that which he once pursued was due to his trip to Chile. The summer before he quit his job, my dad traveled to an impoverished section of Chile with a church group to build a school for the children of a small village. After my dad returned, both my mom and I could tell that the experience had changed him. About six months later, my dad told me that he had resigned from his job. Naturally, this confused me because I thought my dad enjoyed his job; so I asked him why he would ever want to quit. I will always remember his reply: "Well, Marie, if I kept this job it would be like repeating the fifth grade over and over again." Of course, I immediately understood after he said this, for no fate would be worse for me, a fifth grader, than to repeat the fifth grade.... So how have my dad's actions affected me? He exposed me to a world that reached far beyond my white suburb. He taught me at an early age that money does not equal happiness. He showed me how to reject convention in the face of uncertainty. Truly, in a world of poverty, vice, and boredom he taught me to cultivate my garden. Larry began his volunteer work in Dallas, Texas, as the North Texas United Methodist Volunteers In Mission coordinator. In addition to facilitating UMVIM work, he was instrumental in founding several charitable institutions to serve the needs of inner-city residents, especially immigrants and persons with handicapping conditions.

Having visited Methodist churches and social outreach programs in Matamoros, Mexico, adjacent to Brownsville, Texas, Larry decided in 2002...