Hello, my name is Genesis! I am a sophomore at the Institute for G.O.D. and I am double majoring in Biblical Studies and Community Development.

I have been on several trips abroad over the course of my adolescent life, but I attended my first Summer Internship with G.O.D. Int’l, in the summer of 2021. It was an enlightening and uniquely rich experience. I formed pivotal memories on SI that I take with me everyday and into my biblical education. The friendships that I made on my trip are still the strongest friendships I have ever had. The drive I have to learn God’s word has been exponentiated because I encountered the healing and empowering work of God in the lives of the poor. Their suffering only seemed resolvable with financial resources, but Summer Internship helped me see that we are the resource God wants to use to bring about transformation.

Jesus had a way that he carried out his ministry and we can learn from it in his word. It takes time to learn, it requires dedication, and it takes obedience. So, I attend the Institute for G.O.D. and prayerfully approach my education with the intent to use it in the service to the needy and marginalized. 

1. It kickstarts the development of your global consciousness.

Going on an internship, before coming to the institute, expands your ability to understand the vision and mission God has for his people. Why does that matter if you want to come to the institute? It matters because the Institute is founded on the belief that God’s vision for the world is to bring about societal transformation where the poor are lifted up, advocated for, and empowered through an education in the word of God. In order for that vision to be enacted, students must be appropriately equipped to meet the demands that emerge in communities of need. On internship you are presented with opportunity after opportunity to sit with the folks in these communities; learn their names, their stories, their day-to-day affairs, and see their need up-front and personal. Then, after all that you learned about them and did to serve them, you’re given hours of in-depth bible study to frame the way you think about what you experienced. This process is repeated everyday on internship and it develops the global consciousness needed for the educational experience at the institute. 

2. You develop profound friendships before you even move in.

Spending a concentrated amount of time with anybody, naturally creates a new level of familiarity between both parties. On internship, you’re not only with a variety of people from your team every second of every day, but you see each other at your most vulnerable and your best states. This stretches both parties to learn from one another and especially learn how to work together to be effective on the field. Whether that looks like designating roles between one another based upon giftings you’ve noticed or using your words to pray and encourage your teammate in the work you’re doing. The experiences that you have serving together create both a shared moment and vocabulary where you now have a story you’re both a part of. It gives you a memory to reference once the school year begins and it makes the social integration aspect of school quite a bit easier.

3. Experience matters! 

Internship provides a safe space for students to learn who God is within the context of encountering the poor and marginalized in the third world. In Matthew 25:40 Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” He goes on to mention specific acts of service like feeding, clothing, visiting and showing hospitality to the “least of these.” Therefore, our service to the poor connects with our service to God himself. That encounter with God that happens while visiting a handicapped widow or cleaning the open wounds of an orphan, cannot be replaced by reading a book 3rd world missions. President Garner says it like this, “Experience is perhaps the most intense of teachers in that you can’t evade its lessons without paying the price.” So all of the initial reactions to what you experience cannot be avoided because it is right in front of your face. It is right then and there that you learn and you encounter God through serving the people he loves.

4. It introduces spiritual disciplines that are commonly practiced at The Institute

At the Institute, students engage in spiritual disciplines such as prayer, worship, journaling, and meditation on a weekly basis. Prayer is held every morning at 6am in the dorm houses. Chapel is held on Wednesday morning and community prayer is held at night. Meditation is led by our Chaplain on Thursdays and it is a common favorite of the students! Now, if these are disciplines that are foreign to you, adjusting to them can be quite the challenge when coming into the institute–not impossible to overcome, but most definitely a challenge. However, internship is all the preparation that students need to get them into spiritual shape for the school year. Throughout the trip, all of these disciplines (prayer, journaling, meditation, and worship) are a part of the Internship experience. It is so important to our school that our students mature in their spirituality through their education and also through the discipline of their flesh. Internship hones in all of those spiritual loose ends students may feel like they have during the summer time while preparing for the school year. 

5. It helps you understand the bigger picture of what your education is for before going into it.

As I mentioned in reason #2, it is your experience serving the poor that shapes your understanding of what you learn in the classroom. It’s largely the testimony of Institute students who did go on internship before moving in that they felt more connected to their classes and schoolwork because they had faces to recall that kept them motivated to learn. The stories attached to those faces were what God used to help them remember why they wanted to learn His word; so they can be appropriately equipped for the needs of the poor and marginalized. Those same students prove to have a deeper understanding of what they learn because they have stories from abroad that they can use within the classroom context. So instead of talking about imaginary people, speaking from their imagination, or parroting what they’ve read in a book, they speak from the compassion and conviction that God cultivated in them during summer internship.