2013 SD Winter Mission Trip
Written by John T.
Following our whirlwind tour of California, the San Diego mission team hit the ground running on the afternoon of the 9th after an eight-hour drive down from Yosemite. The Austin team combined with a group of students and staff from Berkeley to comprise a mission team of 120 members. It was a nice reunion between the Austin and Berkeley team, but time was short, so we got started quickly.
We began by getting acquainted with the campus, which was no small task. We divided our team among the six individual colleges that make up the UCSD campus, and we were given a brief tour of the main portions of campus, which staved off some but not all of our moments of disorientation. Struggling through our muddled sense of direction and general fatigue from the California tour, we pressed on to reach out to the students at San Diego.
Many of us spent the majority of our days striking up conversations with students and get to know more of the campus life. We also had many welcome events in the evenings, such as multiple boardgame and boba nights, a ramen bar, and a churro night, which fostered a cozy environment for us to develop more relationships with students. All of these events and efforts were centered on our main event, the Winter Welcome Night.
In an effort to be more accessible for such a large campus, we had two welcome nights simultaneously at different locations of the campus. We began with a nice dinner of Korean BBQ, a funny and applicable skit, engaging talk about what true freedom means, and ended with an entertaining rendition of the Game of all Games. Praise God for the 150 new students we met that night!
We ended our mission trip with a trip to the UCLA campus for a brief prayer walk and to spend some time on the campus on which we will be planting a church this coming fall quarter. There was also a great time of fellowship together at a San Diego beach and a nice view at Mount Soledad. It was an appropriate way to end the mission trip as we said our good byes to the Berkeley and SD students with a final prayer time together over their campus.