Now that she has earned her master’s degree, one former Emporian plans to spend the next year traveling the world. But the trip won’t be strictly for fun. It will be hard work.
In a gesture of Christian outreach, Bethany Stanbrough has chosen to give almost a year of her time on a mission to help in countries around the world. Beginning this month, Stanbrough will travel to a different country each month for 11 months on a World Race through the company Adventures in Missions.
“It’s not your typical missions experience,” Stanbrough said of her decision to take part in the trip. “It’s a way for young adults to abandon a traditional lifestyle in exchange for an experience bigger than themselves.”
With previous experience as a missionary in Juarez, Mexico, Stanbrough said she is moved through her faith to serve. While growing up in Emporia she belonged to the First United Methodist Church.
“I found the World Race online,” she said. “I knew I wanted to do some kind of longer-term mission when I graduated from La Salle in Philadelphia. It’s just something I’ve always kind of had a heart for.”
Though she doesn’t know the specifics, Stanbrough said she’ll be participating in a variety of activities, which could include participating in children’s ministry, building churches, fighting human trafficking, caring for the homeless, teaching English, providing orphans with homes and feeding the hungry. She said that she will spend approximately one month in each country before moving on.
“We don’t know what we’ll be doing every month, and we won’t know until we get there,” she said. “That’s kind of what makes it exciting.”
While an undergraduate student at the University of Kansas she participated in mission trips to build homes in Mexico, and she said it was a valuable experience.
“It was really eye-opening, to see that there were people that live that way, basically,” she said. “We were in really poverty-stricken areas, and some people lived in houses made out of cardboard boxes. ... It kind of makes you think about how good we have things and how grateful we should be.”
Last summer, she led a group of students on a mission trip to Guatemala to work in a local village.
“The people there, it just amazed me,” she said. “They’d never had someone come into their community and want to give up their time to help them.”
That feeling was what provided the final impulse that caused her to sign up for the World Race.
To participate in the trip, Stanbrough has had to engage in fundraising in order to raise the $15,500 she needs. Though it is an activity she is used to — she raised money for the La Salle Fund while earning her master’s degree — she is still about $6,000 from her goal.
“I’ve been blown away by how supportive everyone has been,” she said. “My co-workers at La Salle, and my mom works at Riverside Elementary and her co-workers have been great.”
Throughout her trip, Stanbrough will maintain a blog so she can post stories, photos and videos, and she encourages people to enter their e-mail addresses for updates on her site at bethanystanbrough.theworldrace.org.
Those who would like to donate for her trip can make a tax-deductible donation to Adventures in Missions, P.O. Box 534470, Atlanta, GA, 30353. Those who make donations should indicate Stanbrough’s name on the check.