Hgpf. No, not a typo. This is a word. At one time, it was just an acronym, but somewhere along the way it seems these four letters took on a meaning all their own. Humble, gentle, patient, and forbearing. These are the words that Hgpf represents. Embracing them helps develop a team mentality. Brad came up with the super catchy acronym back in the day, but I still think he just threw it out there after trying for hours to come up with something catchy using thesaurus.com. Either way, team building is a huge part of the iGo experience. It always has been.

We place students on teams with other students and send them to make Him famous among unreached people groups. In many cases, these teams will spend inordinate amounts of time together as they serve alongside each other day after day while experiencing the challenges of culture shock, spiritual warfare, and fatigue. Their ability to function as a unified team is so important. Jesus said that when we are unified, we show the world that Jesus is the Son of God and that He loves them (John 17:23). Wow. Team unity is tied (like everything else) to the bottom line. When our teams function together and demonstrate Hgpf with each other, they bring glory to Jesus. And so we teach it, pray for it, and try to demonstrate it no matter how ridiculous it sounds when we say it. Bring the Hgpf.

As this countdown nears the end, I have realized how much I have enjoyed looking back at these ten years. We have journeyed with some great students, and those great students have formed great teams. 2009 was no different. But thinking about all our teams has made me think about the core of the iGo team.

I had absolutely no idea ten years ago that God was going to give me a team to lead at iGo. When you start something from scratch there are too many doubts about the future to think about asking anyone else to get in a boat that may or may not be sinking.

There is no way iGo would be celebrating ten years if it weren’t for the team that serves here. It is the team around me that makes this happen, but they aren’t my team. They are His. I still haven’t recruited a staff member. I have never asked for resumes. No ads on monster.com. But He has faithfully led people to our team to play a specific role, many times before I knew we needed that role played. Some of them came and served for a time and then moved on, but their contribution was vital. This truly is a team effort.

You probably know this, but I want to make sure. Our staff raises their own support to work here. God calls them to join us, and then he provides through support raising. Some of them sacrifice on a daily basis because they believe so much in the ministry and vision of iGo. I am humbled, amazed, and blessed to get to lead a group of people like that. They do their jobs with excellence not because of a paycheck and definitely not for the benefits (free T-shirts?). They serve because of their calling, passion, and commitment. Thanks team!

So here is my challenge (to whomever might be reading along).

1. Tell an iGo staff member how much you appreciate them. You wouldn’t read this post if I listed everything they do on a yearly basis to make your trip successful.
2. Consider supporting an iGo staff member financially. Did you have a great trip? Did an iGo staff member help you out? Why not become a member of his or her support team, helping them do what God has called them to do. I promise it will be an investment with a great return.

2009 was another great year. There are some good pictures on Facebook already from that summer. Make a comment on them. Tag someone. Start a conversation. Join the celebration. We are less than a week away from the 10 Year Celebration Banquet.

To attend the banquet this Saturday, October 23, register here: 2010 iGo Global Celebration Banquet

For all eight of you that have been following along with all these countdown articles, you know that in 2007 things really began to click. We learned so much over the first six summers, and everything seemed to come together almost perfectly in that one summer. We felt like we had finally figured this thing out.

Consider the following quote:

“If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change.  If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.”  ~John A. Simone, Sr.

Yes, after seeing this thing turn almost into a finely tuned machine in 2007, almost everything changed in 2008. Change started in Germany, and as a result, our time ended in Germany. The infamous Jeff received a new and much better position with the IMB. Unfortunately for us, this meant he would no longer be living in Germany. Instead he would be in a little region of the world known as the Middle East. Yes, that Middle East.

Suddenly, the one M on the planet we knew who was crazy enough to take hundreds of students at a time, pour himself into interns while entrusting them with the bulk of the daily leadership of those hundreds of students was now moving literally between “Iraq and a hard place.” You figure it out.

We knew that we would no longer be sending him large teams of entry level students. First, we didn’t want to take entry level students into the Middle East, and second we didn’t figure hundreds of parents would be too cool with the idea either.

So change we did. Our first student team ever (2001) served in Japan, and we had been sending teams to Japan every summer since. Our main contact in Tokyo was Buddy, and coincidentally (read sarcasm in the tone there) Buddy had just been given a new role as volunteer coordinator for the Tokyo team. Buddy’s vision was to have as many short-term teams as possible in Tokyo in 2008.

It was our great privilege to introduce Buddy to 189 of our BFF’s from Texas Super Summer. No, the number is not mistyped. We basically invaded Tokyo in 2008 with a team of 189 students and adults from Texas Super Summer. In addition to that, we had established a partnership with the Kansas Nebraska Baptist Convention and were able to send that team of 30+ students to Tokyo as well.

The GO Students partnership from Oklahoma combined with our new partnership with the Missouri Baptist Convention decided to go a different route than Tokyo. Instead we decided to keep that partnership in Western Europe and move it to a different city and country.

God opened up doors for us at just the right time in Wales and England to begin sending these students from Oklahoma and Missouri to the United Kingdom.

NOTE: Our focus from day one at iGo has been to point students towards Great Commission completion work. This means that we want to send students to places where they can work with unreached and least reached peoples. When a lot of people hear that we send students to places like London, they tend to think of it as a tour group disguised as a mission trip. However, the truth is we are strategically engaging the world’s great cities where peoples from all nations have gathered. We can bring entry level students into these places in significant numbers and engage unreached people groups in “parent-approved” settings. And if you still have doubts, come and spend a week on the ground in London with our teams. Most of them don’t even see the main tourist attractions, choosing to spend their one free day with new friends they have met throughout the week.

God changed pretty much everything in 2008. And we never missed a beat. Of course, that isn’t because we were such good planners. It is because when He changed everything, He had already set in motion His plan to continue this work. Once again, we found ourselves riding along marvelling at His timing, His provision, and His faithfulness to the ministry He had given us.

We also had Xtreme Journey teams serving in super tough and challenging places. Places that are the modern day equivalent of the ends of the earth. We rotated our JSI’s over to Tokyo and the UK to help lead the teams. 2008 was a great year, and in many ways a new beginning for iGo. We started to see that change truly was going to be a part of our culture. In fact, just this summer, due to circumstances once again beyond our control, our partnership with Tokyo has come to an end. And almost as soon as it did, God had opened up new doors for us in Paris and Amsterdam. As we enter the next 10 years of ministry, we will do so with new locations and new partnerships once again. Change is inevitable, and change can definitely be good.

The great “Hannibal” Smith from The A-team is famous for saying, “I love it when a plan comes together.” This was his closing line of each episode right after everything worked out, but hardly ever according to his plan.

2007 felt a little like that. The common thread throughout all these countdown articles is God’s faithfulness and guidance. This ministry has always been His vision, His plan, and His work. He led us to every idea, and many times he seemed to just drop things in our lap. The way He orchestrated events and circumstances to get us further down the road left us humbled and encouraged. His plans always came together, often at the expense of ours.

So when we say that in 2007 things really began to click, you know where to give the credit.

That little JSI idea from 2004 was rolling by the time 2007 came around. High school and college students were interning with M’s in Germany and Japan. These students spent their summer months leading one week and other short term teams on the field. They invested in people from their host cultures while our M partners invested in them through intense discipleship. It was cool to glance at this on the surface and see that we were allowing these students to become M’s. They were doing everything that M’s do, right alongside the career M’s. Even cooler was to look closer and see that we were doing something even bigger. We were helping these students develop an on mission life.

We also saw a clear strategy develop around this time for helping students intensify their engagement. Students could at that time serve with iGo for a week on an entry level team or for most of the summer as a JSI or college Xtreme Journey team member. That, however, wasn’t enough for a couple of young ladies. Chelsea and Amy approached us and asked if we would send them to East Asia for 14 months. Without really knowing how to do that (and Chelsea and Amy can verify that fact), we said yes. Those two young ladies paved the way in so many areas. We now send students to the middle east for 6 months or a year. We learned from them that we needed to provide clear steps for our students to see what is next in their journey towards missional living. As we get to walk with students over the course of a few years and multiple levels of trips, we can truly help them become on mission Christ followers. Thanks Amy and Chelsea for being such great guinea pigs (that sounds better than lab rats).

I remember writing in my journal back in 2001 how much I wanted hundreds of students to serve overseas with us all over the planet. I also remember not knowing how in the world that would ever happen. I didn’t have a plan, just a vision. Seven summers later we were able to train and send 500 students overseas. Some of them served a week, some served the whole summer, and three served longer than six months. Yep, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Stay tuned for the final few articles in this countdown series. There is more to that 2001 journal entry that I need to share, more of God’s fulfillment of the vision He gave us from the very beginning, and of course more pictures to post on Facebook.

[If you got this far, you should post a comment to Shu, letting him know you're reading these. He needs some motivation to continue these updates!]

Very shortly after we started iGo (back then, iWitness) our friend James Lankford asked us to drive up to Oklahoma for a meeting. In that meeting James simply asked us if we could handle about 200 Oklahoma students that had indicated they wanted to serve on an international mission trip.

We said no. Or maybe it was an emphatic no way. At that time, we had not taken a team of students anywhere. We felt like just a couple of guys with a good idea, but with no real idea if we could make that idea happen. We really wanted to say yes, but we knew deep down that we just weren’t ready for that kind of bandwidth. We asked James to give us a couple of years to get this thing going, and we would get back in touch.

And then we drove back to Texas (AKA The Republic) and poured all of our time and energy into barely mobilizing a team of 13 to Japan. (See the 2001 story for more details).

Fast forward to the spring of 2005. We were preparing for our biggest summer ever. Texas Super Summer Global had, to say the least, taken off. We were poised to send over 200 students that summer, and we felt like we had a partnership model now that might work elsewhere.

Meanwhile, up in Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plains, James and the BGCO had been working diligently to mobilize students from Falls Creek. With over 40,000 students attending Falls Creek every summer, they still weren’t having any success with their GO Students initiative. In fact, in 2005 they would send less than 10 students overseas through GO Students.

It was time for another meeting. James and I met for three hours that day at InterUrban Restaurant in Ardmore, OK (someday maybe they will put a random historical marker in front of that place). With James’ desire to see Oklahoma students go global to make Him famous and our new model, we formed an official partnership. iGo Global would now be the student missions facilitator for the BGCO through Falls Creek.

Keep in mind that what we were doing with Texas Super Summer was just a model. Going into 2005, it hadn’t even been a successful model, other than we had 100 students and adults signed up and ready to go. With Oklahoma, we didn’t know what to expect. There were enough differences in the camp, partnership, etc. to make us wonder if we would have anywhere near the same level of success.

We didn’t have to wonder for long. When 2006 rolled around, we ended up sending 194 Oklahoma students and adults overseas. The response was so amazing that we had to scramble to create two weeks instead of one for GO Students. From a total of 13 in 2001 to over 400 in 2006!

Of course, now that we look back we can see this thing unfold so clearly. God’s timing was so perfect. We truly weren’t ready in that first year, but I doubt Oklahoma was ready then either. Without their struggle to do it themselves for a few years, they might not have ever been to the point where they would jump in with both feet. God took some time to get us ready and then he set in motion a groundswell from every corner of Oklahoma and all the parts in between.

Yes, 2006 was intense. It was crazy and demanding and fulfilling and challenging and stretching. But it was so much fun. So much joy came when everything came together like that. We had college teams serving in some of the hardest places on the planet to penetrate with the gospel. We had interns in Germany and Japan helping the M’s to get ready for and lead other teams coming in. We had a great group of Jimmy interns back in the office helping us to mobilize. And God was building our staff, our vision, our ministry, and our impact.

Side Notes: (Because every time I write one of these recaps somebody tells me what I forgot)

2005: First year we had a mascot in iGosia. The first one was an armadillo. In 2006, we went to the penguin. Can you name all the others?

Staff: God had to build our staff while he was growing our ministry as well. Ky and Aaron finally got out of college and joined the team officially shortly after Natalie in the 04/05 year. Crystal Meeker joined us in 2005 as well. Lori Flowers had come with us for a few years to help us get organized, but she left to move to Atlanta with her husband. In 2006, Elizabeth Junell heard the call (either from God or from us for help) and she took over as adminstrative and business manager. The exact dates and such have gotten away from me but Kent Jones made a shift to iGo staff instead of GO Foundation staff as his primary job somewhere in there as well.

Jimmy: It seems like in 2005 or maybe 2006 we started calling our office interns Jimmy. Brad decided that everyone needed a friend named Jimmy, and it was easier to give them all the same name. So we did.

And the countdown to our 10th Anniversary Celebration continues!

Click here to register for the celebration.

Click here to see our Facebook page and see pictures from our 2006 teams.