36Student Life Branching Out The Global Missions Experience calls for students to branch out in the mission field Harding University hosted guests and students to experience worldwide and domestic missionary life simulations through the Global Missions Experience. The 2023 Global Missions Experience (GME) was hosted in September at Harding Unversity Tahkodah (HUT). Different churches, college groups, community members, and about 200 Harding students came together to learn about missionary work. Professors and student leaders helped organize and lead the weekend with help from various volunteers. One of Harding’s missionary in residence, Oneal Tankersley, served in Africa for over 20 years and now helped run the HUT training facility in Floral, Arkansas. “The GME (Global Missions Experience) and the GMC (Global Missions Conference) began several years ago as the heir to the World Mission Workshop,” Tankersley said. “That event had served each year for half a century as a way of getting missional college and university students from sister institutions together for a few days of encouragement and instruction.” The GME began as a workshop to bring prospective missionaries together to learn from others’ experiences. Since then, the World Mission Workshop grew, leading universities to join together for two different events - the GMC and the GME. “The new GMC and GME arrangement is an attempt to give a fresh and more hands-on missions event that not only inspires but also gives students a series of tactile real-life simulations to share and experience together,” Tankersly said. The hands-on experience involved basic survival training and a special immersive encounter. Seniors Hallie Davis, Cynthia Turner and Landon Gardner were the student codirectors for GME 2023. As directors, they met weekly staring in Janurary 2023, and then met in fall 2023 three times a week. Each director had specific roles they overlooked. Some dealt with finace, others with marketing. Davis had been a student of the HUT two-week intersession course and had served as an intern. Her work with HUT and participation in Harding in Zambia abroad program equipped her to organize the market simulation, a simultation that focused on exposing the guests to a foreign market. “They were put into families, and they went through a market simulation that captures the idea of what a market is like in a foreign country,” Davis said. “As someone who’s been to a market in a foreign country, I can say it’s very accurate. They then get in their families, they learn how to buy food and barter, they have to dodge pickpockets and navigate beggars and people wanting their money.” In addition to the market, Davis was also in charge of an interactive mural that was created throughout the class time, then interacted with on the final night of the weekend. The mural had a call to mission that allowed students and guests to commit to mission work at somepoint throughout their lifetime. “If people felt called to do global mission work or domestic mission work, they would come up get their thumbprint painted with a specific color,” Davis said. “Global would be put in the trees as leaves, and for domestic, you put it in the roots. It was this interactive moment where people could commit to this action of pursuing missions.” The annual weekend sought to inspire followers of Christ to become servants and lead new hearts to God. Throughout his years at HUT and hosting GME, Tankersley had witnessed what GME did for the people of the world. “The GME impacts the world through the students whose hearts and minds are touched and transformed by it,” Tankersley said. “It is the desire of all of our HU missions staff and colleagues to walk alongside these students to help them further discover and mature in their plans for service.” Shawn Daggett, director of the Center for World Missions, was the head faculty adviser for the event. Daggett led the event multiple times in the past and was excited it was back at Harding. He had big goals for both the event and the participants. “Hopefully we will all be more globally aware and joyful in sharing our faith at home and abroad,” Daggett said. “Whether we become better senders or we become missionaries, our prayer is that thousands of people will hear about Jesus in an authentic and caring way and that Christians from all parts of the world to all parts of the world will be servants and disciples sharing the good news and hope that Jesus gives.” The Global Mission Experience would continue in the future to bring more people towards a call of missions. The education, practice and worshipping of the event brought unlikely students together by the desire for Christ. The 2024 GME was planned to be held by Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee. Written by Emma McDaris “Our prayer is that thousands of people will hear about Jesus in an authentic and caring way and that Christians from all parts of the world to all parts of the world will be servants and disciples sharing the good news and hope that Jesus gives.” - Shawn Daggett
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