Last year, Nick Furtado graduated from Cedar Park Christian School, planning his college education – he had his application accepted, deposit paid, food budget set, and roommate selected. But that summer, he joined a mission trip to Northern Ireland where he worked with local students on a sports ministry, mostly playing soccer. He recounts how the trip changed his plans. “I loved the experience of traveling overseas, getting to know how other people lived, and being engulfed in their culture,” he explains. “I saw an opportunity to potentially make a difference.”

Yet college still may remain in Nick's future. As he explains, "My contemporaries are starting or have started college, while I decided on at least a gap year. I love spending time with people, especially one-on-one. In the future, I could see myself studying psychology and getting my Master's degree, but I also see myself working one-on-one counseling people - even without a degree.”

Nick researched service mission options and enrolled in a program run by the nonprofit organization, Adventures in Missions, called the World Race Gap Year. “It is a nine-month program, and you travel between three and five countries. You stay in each country for one to two months and work among the people there to spread the gospel,” he continues. “I started in Guatemala and loved it. At times it was jarring as everything is so different. It was humbling. People live in tiny homes and have nothing, but want to share everything with you. I lived out of a backpack for all that time, with four T-shirts and two pairs of pants and undergarments. Overall, it was a beautiful experience.”

After Guatemala, Nick continued to Vietnam, Cambodia, Swaziland (now Eswatini), and finally, to South Africa. “We were on three different continents. It was a crazy amazing experience to see the world through a new perspective, and to live in different countries,” he enthuses. “To witness how they operate and meet their people with their vastly diverse cultures was eye opening for me.”

The team aspect of the program was particularly important to Nick. "I learned what it means to be part of a team. We worked in a squad of 50 people who go to a country together, and within a squad there are six teams of seven or eight people,” he says. “I was part of a community in a program that was disciplined, and shared a love for Christ and each other. There was real beauty in the experience.”

Now, at age 19, Nick is back in the United States living in Georgia and continuing his work.

While missing his family (he has a younger sister, 14), he remains close to them. “My mom and dad always tell me how proud they are of me, "he says. “My mom misses me, and we talk constantly.”

Adventures in Missions World Race Expedition programs serve long-term strategic partners in nine different countries including Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Romania, Albania, Türkiye, Jordan, Thailand, Eswatini, and South Africa. Nick is following others before him in continuing to participate by interning for the world race on staff. On his nine-month trip he was a ‘goer,’ communicating and working with people living in different countries. In Georgia he is learning the other, complementary role of a ‘sender,’ managing the administration and logistics, which he also enjoys. “I am excited to be a part of that too,” he explains. “I am training people to go on the trips and helping to send them out.”

The Christian fellowship in the program is also important to Nick, but he likes how people from diverse backgrounds join up. “I have seen people who are not Christian or not fully Christian, come to what we call training camp,” he says. “They are committed Christians by the end of their training when they go out into the field. But we all bring something of ourselves as human beings and we all have so much to learn from each other. I love going to different churches and seeing what they can teach me.”

Members of Adventures in Missions also play a role in raising funds for their work from friends and families, and from their home churches. When they are ‘racers’ on overseas trips, they communicate their experiences and work on blogs so that the people who fund them can directly see the impact they are having. Nick is grateful for the assistance he has received from his family’s church, and hopes readers will consider supporting his work financially - thank you!

 

To support Nick’s work with your donation, go to https://adventuresinmissions.servicereef.com/events/adventures-in-missions-3/affiliated-missionary/participants/nicholas-furtado - or just look up ‘adventures in missions service reef Nicholas Furtado’.