After working in Palau one year as a student missionary, Thomas Hayes, a junior religious education major, had difficulty settling back into campus life.
“It [returning to Southern] was very bad,” Hayes said. “In Palau, I woke up early every morning and did a lot of hard work, but I did it for others. I came back here and I would wake up just to go to school. Often I felt like I was being selfish.”
Hayes was a student missionary from 2016-2017. In Palau he worked as physical education elementary teacher at the Palau Seventh-day Adventist Academy, which has approximately 200 students.
Senior international studies major Kenn Laughlin, another student missionary that worked in Palau as an English and U.S. Government teacher, shared a similar experience.
“I was more satisfied when I was doing something,” Laughin said, “when I was serving rather than sitting in a classroom.”
According to Christian Bunch, director of Student Missions and a previous student missionary in India, it can take a student a couple of months to readjust after spending a year in the mission field.
“It can get hard,” Bunch said. “Not so much because of the culture shock, but instead you might have purpose shock. When you are a student missionary, you are more focused on other people. Then you come back here and it’s just so ‘you’ centered that you really struggle with this shift of things.”
To help students adapt, Student Missions provides staff to help students transition back to college life. They do regular follow ups when necessary and plan reentry retreats to create connections among the other student missionaries.
Evelyn Park, a junior education major at Southern who also went as a missionary last year to Palau said that what helps the most is getting involved with the ministries on campus.
“Coming back home, I came straight back to leading out in camp meetings,” said Park. “Now in college, I am leading out in the church, at the school; I am doing life groups…There are just a lot of things where I do feel purpose.”
Student Missions is a program that started 51 years ago. This year there are 70 students missionaries in 19 different countries, including Ukraine, Malawi and the Philippines.
“Being a student missionary changed my life,” Park said. “I brought back the missionary mindset to America. Because of that I am living differently. My mind is still in that mission mode.”
Image credit: Ken Laughlin