Want to revitalize your spiritual life? Try going on a mission trip! In this episode, Elizabeth Phillips and Ryan Noll, missionaries who serve FOCUS on the Missions team, join Jessica to talk about mission trips. Jess, Elizabeth, and Ryan discuss:

How encountering Christ in the poor can transform your daily prayer
How the adventure of a mission trip can be a catalyst for growth in virtue and trust in God
Common objections to mission trips, including the question: Shouldn't I just send money?

Want to see where FOCUS is sending students and missionaries on mission trips to in this school year? Check out the Missions website here: FOCUS Missions

ELizabeth Philipps is an eighth- year missionary with FOCUS. She served 5 years on campus at Omaha- Nebraska, Wayne State College, and Franciscan University and is now starting her third year with FOCUS missions. She started serving on mission trips while in college at Franciscan University and had a transformative experience serving in New York her junior year. It was this trip that led her to discern a call to serve as a full time missionary after she graduated. Since joining staff with FOCUS, Elizabeth has served on 10 different trips. The most recent of these was a mission to Tanzania this past summer. Outside of her job with missions, Elizabeth enjoys baking, ice skating, reading the classics, and making Rosaries.

Ryan Noll is a tenth-year missionary with FOCUS, beginning his 3rd year on the missions team. Ryan fell in love with missions after his first trip to Nicaragua in 2015. Since then, he has been on 13 trips with FOCUS to various locations around the world. As a campus missionary, he served on the Digital Outreach team, at NYU, where he was a team director for 4 years, and he led the expansion effort at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In his spare time, he’s been leaning into his artistic talents by getting involved in community theatre, where he’s recently been cast in productions of Disney’s Newsies, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, and Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost.

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