SERVE NATIONS HUT's mission training village prepared students for Global Outreach summer campaigns. The Harding University Tahkodah (HUT) mission training village was a resource available for Harding students co preparefor mission campaigns in rhe U.S. and abroad. HUT was a piece of property owned and operated by Harding University in the Ozark Mountains in Floral, Arkansas, with small villages that resembled different places in the world, such as Guatemala, Cambodia or Africa. Dr. Shawn Daggett, professor of Bible and Ministry and director of the Center for World Missions, said the idea of the training village was a dream of mission teachers in the late 1990s, especially Dr. Monce Cox, professor and dean of the College of Bible and Ministry, who was the director of the Center for World Missions at the time. Daggett said Cox received the permissions, property and funding from the advising council of the Center for World Missions and from other donors. According to Oneal Tankersley, missionary-in-residence and director of HUT, the training village worked by providing experiential learning. Austin Nightengale, assistant manager of HUT, said the main thing they did was put students into the realities people faced daily or on a regular basis around the world. "There is no way to fully prepare somebody for the things he or she will experience overseas," Nightengalesaid. "The idea of HUT is that at least it will give you a little bit of familiarization with some of the common elements of over eas service and traveling." Daggett said students were a part of the training village by taking the development ministry course (BMIS 388), which was held during intersession. Tankersley said they taught rhe students unique thingssuch as how make a garden and take care of animals. He also said they worked with a lot of volunteers who made up the HUT family. "One of the things that means a lot to us is that people who [go] through our course want to volunteer the next year and train other students," Tankersley said. "That just fills my heart with joy." Junior social work major Virginia Davison, a volunteer at HUT since spring 2017, went on a mission campaign to Nepailn summer 2017 and Zambia in fall 2017 after taking the BMIS 388 course the same summer.Davison said the lessons she learned at HUT helped her deal with someof the situations she encountered and the things she had to do on the mission field. "We did the same exact gardening we did at HUT in Zambia, and that was a whole special thing for all of us because we all had this deep connection with HUT," Davison said. "When overwe saw it there, we felt we were at home. It really helped us to process a lot of the things we went through." Daggett said the training provided at HUT was not for any specific majors and the lessons learned would always be useful. "This is not a training for short-term missions but for a life in the mission of God," Daggett aid. 'We see short-term missons as justshort learning experiences fo r a life of missions because the mission never ends." story by Yovani Arismendiz 15 I SUMMER CAMPAIGNS
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