Liberty University Group

Please tell us a little bit about yourself :

We are college students from Liberty University who headed up the Max Mission Trip with raising money from the guys within our hall. It was a dorm project.

So why did you take a Max Missions Trip?

I, John, saw some things about it, and thought, "why not?" we could do that as a hall. I figured it would be great goal, bring unity, etc. and what better cause than sponsoring a native missionary.

What kind of stuff did you do to raise support for your missionary?

Different members of our hall (7-2) would go into most every guy's room in our hall and collect loose change and bills. One guy, Russon, went to speak at his church. Some either got money from parents or friends. We got support from our sister dorm. There were many different avenues in a college setting where we were able to collect support.

What kind of response did you get when you told people about your missionary and invited them to help support Him?

As a hall, guys were initially excited but some saw it as an unachievable task. Faith was increased as we reached out goal in a short amount of time. Guys were encouraged along the way as we met together and talked about missions and listened to part of a tape from KP.

How did the support come in? Was it in the way that you expected?

Nope. Not at all. I guess that is the way God usually works. I originally thought that we could raise the money by contacting our parents and other people who could help us. Turns out most of the money came from the college students themselves with a large help from a church that Russon went to speak at (his home church).

What was the best part of the trip for you?

When Russon came back from his church with about $650.

What would you tell someone who is considering taking a Max Missions Trip?

I can't think of anything better that you could do with your time or money.

How did this trip impact your relationship with God? What things did you gain or learn from it?

Deepened faith (for many guys on the hall). Many got a bigger heart for missions.

What kind of impact do you believe this will have on the unreached of Asia? On eternity?

I can't even begin to imagine the impact this will have on eternity. I know it will have such an immense one that is indescribable. In the hearts of the guys in dorm 7-2 and in our missionary (Vinny) overseas.

Thanks a lot! Any closing comments you would like to say?

A run-down of how it happened…

The vision was cast to the men of 7-2 with about 3 ½ weeks left of school. Our missionary was only 18 years old which made it easy for the guys to connect with him and it was very challenging to their own walks to see a man of this age doing what he was. His name was fairly unpronounceable but he did have Vincent in his name so he was quickly dubbed "Vinny" by the guys.

We collected money from the dorm frequently and were making continuous progress.

After about 3 weeks, we had made a little over $600 I believe. This was good, coming from mostly the students but we only had 1 day left before finals, where people would head out throughout the week.

Some suggested raising money over the summer or thought possibly finishing the next year but…we did not start raising money with plans to finish later. We believed God had called us to finish this by the end of the school year. So we were determined. Some wavered, some persevered. We began to strategize of how we could get the rest of the money over the last couple of days.

It was Sunday and one of the guys in our hall came into the room and asked how much more we needed. We said we were about halfway there. He said something like this should about take care of the rest and he handed us an envelope.

We were ecstatic! He had gone to speak to his church, a church of only 50-60 people in hopes of maybe raising $50 and gaining prayer support. They gave well over $600. This put us a little over $100 short. But we had such great momentum that guys were just giving money like crazy and other guys would just go into guy's rooms and tell them to each give a couple dollars so we could make it. We continued to update our thermometer in the hall that charted how much we had every couple of minutes. Finally, we made it on that very Sunday night. Guys stood in the hall clapping and cheering. We had done it! God had done it! God had done it through us! Money continued to come in that night and the next couple of days as we exceeded our goal.