The closest I’ve ever come to losing volunteers on the field has been when they involved themselves in an extra-curricular activity that was not part of the team’s agenda. In almost every circumstance, the volunteer had been warned against doing exactly what he or she did, but the warning was ignored and a potentially life threatening situation ensued.
A fun distraction or a pick-pocket team in action?
Fortunately, no volunteer that I’ve worked with has been killed while on a mission trip, however, I’ve had two confess to me that during the incident they thought they were going to die. That’s not a situation in which you want to find yourself or a volunteer under your leadership.
One incident was a near drowning on Copacabana Beach in Rio when a volunteer went out for a morning swim, unaware of the power of the undertow of the waves to pull him out to sea. Another was when a volunteer went on a mountain adventure without adequate experience and nearly succumbed to the lack of oxygen in the thin mountain air. One nearly fatal situation involved a couple that went for a walk by themselves in an unsafe area where they were assaulted by two men using broken bottles as weapons.
There have been other incidents that weren’t life threatening, but resulted in stolen property, or at best were an inconvenience to the volunteer and his team members. Most of these were the result of someone wandering off by themselves and either getting lost or placing themselves under some unnecessary threat. One important thing to grasp concerning these incidents is that every one involved adults, not teens or children.
What can we learn from these incidents?
The main purpose of this post is to make volunteer team members aware that in my experience, the most threatening time for volunteers has been when they had free time and made poor decisions about their activities. For some unexplainable reason, people tend to do things they would not otherwise do when they are on an overseas trip. So if you have free time during a mission trip, be extra cautious about your activities.
- HEED the warnings and OBEY the ground rules set out by the missionary or other leader
- DON’T think that for some reason the rules don’t apply to you
- DON’T participate in a non-agenda activity without first talking to someone who knows the area and culture
- STAY with the team and don’t wander off
Mission trips can be and usually are safe experiences for volunteers. Of course, things can happen despite our most cautious efforts, but making wise decisions about how we use unstructured time on a mission trip is something well in our control that can help prevent putting ourselves in harm’s way.
