The most important thing to know about the year 2002 is that it came after 2001. Well, specifically 9/11/2001. How do you grow a ministry that takes high school and college students on airplanes overseas after that happens? Um…you don’t. Out of the 10 years of teaching, training, and sending year two was probably the toughest for many reasons.

If you read last week’s countdown article, you know that God used our first year and especially our first summer team to confirm everything we had dreamed about, prayed for, and hoped in as we started iGo. But in the following year, it seemed like much of that was put to the test. And the end result? We didn’t grow our ministry in 2002.

God did. You have to look a little deeper to see growth, but it was there. You could see a shadow of growth in our numbers. We went from 13 in the summer of 2001 to 19 in the summer of 2002. Like I said, just a shadow. However, sitting here 10 years later I can see his hand guiding us so clearly through the uncertainty. I can see how he led us step by step to put things into place that set us up for the numerical growth around the corner.

In 2002, we sent out two teams, which meant we would not send a staff member with our teams. The groundwork for recruiting and training team leaders was put in place that second summer. Now, this is an integral part of our strategy. Seeing students lead our teams a few years after their first overseas experience with us brings our team a great deal of joy.

We invited four students to intern with us that second summer (Ky Martin, Russell Leatherman, Kelly Kleinkort, and Lauren Gross). We didn’t need interns. We didn’t have any space for interns (For our office, we shared space with Lake Pointe Church members who were unemployed and searching for work. To this day I am not sure if LPC was trying to give me a hint or not). Even so, starting an intentional internship helped us realize we would always be about developing students and raising up leaders. I doubt those first four student interns learned much if anything, but I sure did.

Marc Morrow and Kelly Kleinkort led our first team into East Asia that summer. This team of college students was able to teach English, take language classes, and be involved in all kinds of work that Father had prepared for them.

I guess the strangest part of 2002 for me was not being overseas with our teams, but God was using that to grow me as well. I needed to see what my role would be in the future, which helped me to communicate to future staff as well. We are teachers, we are trainers, and we are senders. Many times that means we don’t get to go. I stayed behind that summer, but 19 students went overseas and made Him famous among unreached peoples. That seemed like growth to me, but little did I know what God had planned for 2003.