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Summer Interns Impacted Through Service and Love
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By Julie Cramer
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“I know now what it means to bring a little bit of heaven to earth, to try to take away someone’s ‘hell’ on earth, by just being with them and letting them know that they are not alone,” said Jessica Sabatini, one of thirteen students who served as summer interns in Honduras, Guatemala, and Russia. Their jobs included everything from teaching English, science, math, and physical education to children in a city dump to telling Bible stories and making crafts with children in Guatemalan and Russian orphanages.
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“I would definitely recommend doing an internship.
It will change the way you look at the world and how you love people.”
– Amanda Villegas, student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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“The main objectives of our interns are to love and serve the children we minister to with the love of Jesus, support our in-country staff in whatever way they can, and to serve the teams we send down while they are there,” Stacey Halleen, missions coordinator, said.
Struck by the stark poverty in Honduras, Amanda Villegas—a student at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln who is majoring in Spanish and communication studies—said that she was surprised by how quickly the country “came to feel like home. I never expected Honduras to come to mean so much to me,” she said. Villegas, who wants to work in public relations for a nonprofit mission in the future, also grew in her personal relationship with Christ.
“Trusting God while I was down there was imperative, and now it’s easier to trust Him in more things now that I am back at school,” she said. “It also allowed me to see how selfish I am here in America. Now I try to remember how little the people there have—and I am forever grateful to God for the life I have been blessed with.”
Jessica Sabatini, a junior early childhood education major at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, agreed. Sabatini and other interns spent the month of June teaching at Amor, Fe, Y Esperanza, or AFE in Honduras. “I loved going to the school and everyone, including us interns, having on dirty clothes and not being judged for it,” she said. “[The students’ love] was unconditional simply because we were Americans who were willing to give up one month of our lives to be with them. You could tell it meant the world to them.”
In addition to teaching, interns who went to Honduras spent some of their afternoons working with The Micah Project. “We would go to the homeless who lived under bridges in the middle of the city. Sometimes we gave them food—anything we could do to love them. Once we even got to wash their feet!” Sabatini said. “These people literally have nothing besides the clothes on their back, so just spending time with them and showing them the least bit of attention would make them smile. I’m taking with me the fact that time is the most valuable thing we have to give.”
What to expect
Internships hold their share of surprises—especially when in another country. Beyond practical skills and spiritual maturity, the interns also gained insight into what daily life is like in other countries.
“What surprised me was how many people they could get inside of rapiditos [small buses],” Sabatini confesses. “I know that sounds silly, but seriously, I would think we were completely full and they would get at least 10 more people crammed in. It was insane. Also, we heard a lot of American rap music everywhere we went. I personally don’t like to listen to music that I can’t understand, but in Honduras, English music was a big deal. It definitely made me feel more at home to hear it.”
Stephen Spencer—a native of Houston, Texas, and an economics student at Vanderbilt University—helped paint an orphanage in Lemoa, Guatemala, as part of his internship. “I learned a lot about Guatemalan culture,” he said. “The pace of things down there is so much slower than an average college student’s. It put me in a situation where I didn’t know as many people as I usually do, which caused me to lean on [God] more. It forced me to have quiet, which allowed me to hear things that He was telling me clearly. I guess it really changed my relationship with Christ with the way I view being still.” Since then, he can’t forget “the smiles of the children,” or “the simple gift of happiness from spending time with someone.”
“Their joy was absolutely contagious,” Sabatini said.
Want to be an intern?
This year Orphan Outreach is looking to expand its internship program to India and to provide students with more cross-cultural training.
“I would definitely tell other people considering this internship with Orphan Outreach to go for it!” Sabatini said. “The people behind the organization truly care about us, and took the time to get to know us before we left. I think it’s important when you’re going on a mission trip to go with a good organization who believes the right things and whose employees show it with their lives—Orphan Outreach is definitely a great one.”
Students interested in becoming an intern should “be sold out for Jesus and open to serving Him in any capacity,“ Stacey Halleen, missions coordinator, said.
Click here for more details and to apply online by January 30.
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