8 college students enjoy mission trip
When eight college students flew south this winter, south was an understatement.
Flying about 6,000 miles deep into South America, the students would enjoy a break from freezing temperatures and a mission-focused adventure.
In January, the eight students joined Fred and Dan Jenny for a two-week hiking adventure and mission trip to Patagonia, a region comprising the southern parts of Chile and Argentina.
Dan Jenny is the director of Tumpline Ministries, an outdoor ministry of the Gospel Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Middlesex Township.
He began the ministry in 2002, though he and his brother, Fred, have been leading wilderness adventure trips since the late 1970s.
The goal of the Jennys' various trips — including canoeing in Canada, hiking in Alaska and backpacking in Montana — is always a spiritual one: to evangelize to young people and show them the beauty of God's creation, Dan said.
Some Tumpline trips like the January excursion to Patagonia have turned from purely adventure to half mission, half adventure.
Dan, 56, had already been to Patagonia with his church three times when he decided to return as a part-time missionary with his wife, Jan.
Interested students went to two informational meetings before Dan left in September for Chile. Their $2,800 was due in increments before his departure."The trips are very economical," Dan said. "Nobody gets paid." He added that almost $2,000 of the cost was plane fare.The eight students had to make sure they had all the immunizations needed, including hepatitis and typhoid. Many already had their passports, but some didn't.The trip was scheduled during Christmas break, convenient not only for the students but also for Fred, who teaches at Grove City College.They left for Chile on Jan. 2, flying from Pittsburgh to Miami. From there, they flew to Chile's capital city, Santiago. Their next flight took them south to Puerto Montt, the jumping-off point for Patagonia. Dan and Jan Jenny picked the group up for the hour drive to their first week's destination, Osorno, a city of 150,000.Osorno is built at the site of Volcán Osorno, which provides natural hot springs. Fred described the temperate weather as "a breath of fresh air" with temperatures in the 70s and 80s.The Jennys took the students along with Fred and his wife, Gerri, to a Hogar, or home for girls who cannot live with their families. Missionaries Gary and Sue Gilmore run the home and are hosting Dan and Jan. The Jennys help by doing maintenance, tutoring and teaching English and practical skills. The Jennys also work with a church in the area teaching English Bible studies to locals.
"Many of them (the locals) are just as interested in the Bible as they are in the English," Dan said.The group stayed at the Hogar for the first week of their trip, performing construction projects in the mornings and conducting a vacation Bible school for the girls in the afternoons. The Hogar is set up as several small houses on the property. One of the houses was empty and available for the group.For college sophomore Matt Kennedy of Mars, VBS was a highlight of the trip. He has taken several Spanish classes and enjoyed conversing with locals and especially the girls at the home. "The girls laughed at me a lot," he said about his Spanish.Junior Karen Merry of Wellsville, N.Y., didn't speak Spanish at all."I struggled with that a lot," she said. But a few days into the first week, she found a way to connect with the Chilean girls.After seeing several girls riding bikes in the courtyard, "I started riding with them. I didn't say a word. I didn't have to say a word," she said. "Those little moments meant a lot to me."After the VBS, the girls at the Hogar gave many of their possessions, such as teddy bears and crafts, to the students as gifts. "It was so humbling," Merry said.The students performed many small construction projects in the mornings including concrete work and maintenance.The afternoons were filled with Bible instruction, during which one of the students taught a Bible lesson in Spanish each day.Evenings were available for down time. Merry said one night the group "reverted to childhood" and played hide and seek.Dan also took the students to a hot springs during the week.Each day, the group got together for devotions led by Dan. They studied the book of Philippians — a study that "really hit home," he said.
Since it was a half mission trip, Dan had all the students fill out a questionnaire about their beliefs to learn how they would "articulate their faith. From there, I knew they were all Christians," he said.Fred Jenny said he was really satisfied to "see the kids helping the little girls at the Hogar."Kennedy enjoyed the food at the Hogar that was similar to Mexican food. "It was really good. We had a lot of chicken, a lot of beef, a lot of fruits and vegetables," he said.Merry said, "They gave us the best they had."After spending a week in Osorno, the group took off for a weeklong hiking adventure.The hiking group included the eight college students, Dan and Jan Jenny and their children Dan Jr. and Laura, Fred Jenny and Clare Deans of Scotland, who was volunteering at a mission in Chile.They flew south again for their hiking adventure in Torres del Paine National Park. The park is named because the sedimentary rock formations in the range, as large as mountains, look like towers.The 80 degree climate the group enjoyed in Osorno was quite different from the cooler weather in the park, but was welcome considering the rocky miles they would put on their hiking shoes.Fred described the hiking weather like "summertime Alaska." Though it was cool, "We all wore sunblock in the daytime," he said.
The group hiked along the five-day W circuit that is named for its shape. They camped in specific campsites through the W, mostly in tents but sometimes in refugios, or hostels, other nights. The W trail is so remote that Dan said it has to be resupplied by horses.They hiked from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, stopping an hour for lunch."We'd stop just to look around," Dan said."Almost everything the second week was new for me,"Merry said. "I had never hiked before."She also described some of the hiking days as "up, up, up."Dan said that participants do not have to be in excellent physical shape to go on one of his hiking adventures."Young people in general are in good enough shape for these trips. People had blisters, but nothing was too difficult," he said.Merry said though the hiking was a challenge, the last day of hiking, which was all uphill, was the best day.The breathtaking scenery of mountains, lakes and waterfalls was especially amazing on horseback, Merry said.Because her lifelong dream was to ride a horse, Merry said it was a miracle she got to do it one of the days in Patagonia.Kennedy, as an outdoorsman, enjoyed the hiking, especially near the waterfalls.In all of Dan's Tumpline trips, the adventurers naturally get to know each other. But on this trip, both Dan and Fred noticed a difference."We did see some real camaraderie that I've never seen before. They're talking about a reunion," Dan said.Fred said that he really enjoyed watching the students enjoy the trip."I remember asking Karen (Merry) if it's what she hoped it would be. She said, 'it's way more,'" he said."Several have remarked about the beauty of God's creation. They get an appreciation for their standard of living we enjoy here."Tumpline Ministries conducts several adventure and mission trips per year that vary from weekend canoe trips to two-week trips to Alaska, Patagonia and Russia. Dan is planning trips to Russia and China as well as Uganda, Zimbabwe and Kenya.For information on Tumpline Ministries, visit tumpline.org.
