CALMS is currently sending short-term mission teams to Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Panama and Venezuela. Typical teams consist of 8 to 12 people serving for 7-10 days.
The typical cost including air transportation, local transportation, housing and meals is between $1,000 and $1,400 per person. CALMS helps team leaders and teams prepare financially for their trips by sharing early in the process a detailed schedule and Good Faith Estimate (GFE) so that they know within $50 to $100 what their final costs will be. We strive to be completely transparent so that we can minimize surprises and help facilitate effective planning.
Our short-term philosophy emphasizes team-work - both among those from North America and between North Americans and Central Americans.
Everyday, CALMS' team members meet through SKYPE calls, telephone, email and when possible, face-to-face to dialog about the best ways to involve God's people in mission. We assess the needs, look at alternatives, and always respectfully ask, "What is the best way to meet a certain need using the available resources."
We seek to be flexible as we match willing volunteers with opportunities. Sometimes, we begin with the needs on the field and look for specific people with the gifts that are needed to accomplish a particular project.
For example, we recently were asked to help 35 Christian congregations and their leaders as well as a number of schools, hospitals, and prisons to help them develop a counseling training program for Belize. In this case, we recruited four highly trained Christian counselors who are working with their Belizean counterparts to develop a new counseling curriculum and training program.
In other cases, we may have a North American congregation asking for an opportunity to serve with a short-term team. We look at their experience and service profile and dialog with our partners in Central America to design an appropriate project. Always, we seek to help North American and Central American Christians work together effectively to accomplish helpful, needed and strategic ministry. Always, we seek to form teams made up of North American and Central American Christians in order to meet needs and grow the capacity of all involved.
Where possible, we try to design projects that will help Christians from different cultures work and learn side-by side. For example, we are currently preparing to send a small group of North Americans who speak Spanish to work with a small group of Panamanian Christians to work together in Costa Rica to help launch a new church planting effort.
Another important part of our short-term philosophy focuses on designing strategic projects that really impact the society and help our Central American partners build their capacity and move forward in mission and ministry. A recent example is a small team of four highly skilled Christian counselors who went to Belize with CALMS to provide counseling training to over 50 church and community leaders who requested this help. This example also shows that there is a place for almost every person in God's mission. The challenge is to match the resources with the needs - something that CALMS really works hard at!
Short-term teams from the United States have served recently with Central Americans to put on music and drama events, build houses for poor people, provide much needed health care, and teach children about Jesus. In the end, both groups learn and serve together, and in the process God grows His church both in Central and North America.
CALMS works hard to make sure that each short-term mission experience is a good one for both the North American volunteers we send and our Central American partners. In addition to designing truly helpful and strategic projects, we work hard at providing all the logistics needed to support and deploy a team.
We also work hard to prepare the team by training the team leader. We do this in one of two ways: 1) Inexperienced leaders may elect to go along on a short-term trip as a participant with an experienced leader. 2) We organize and lead a number of on-field training events each year to help equip future leaders to successfully lead their teams. In addition to the on-field training, we also provide individualized support for short-term leaders through regularly scheduled webinars and conference calls. Finally CALMS helps team leaders equip their team members by providing helpful printed and audio-visual resources.
For more information on CALMS' short-term, click on Short-term Opportunities in the Quick Links section of our website.
