Liberty students will travel around the globe this summer with LU Send

This summer, Liberty students from all different majors will be packing their bags and traveling to various parts of the globe with LU Send. 

Students will be given the opportunity to not only receive credit on these trips, but also to serve the people they come in contact with in each country.

“Summer is especially valuable for students (who) have a very strict academic calendar during the fall and in the spring,” David Welch, executive director of LU Send, said. 

The School of Divinity will be doing a few trips this summer, including a month-long trip to Romania that will leave right after Commencement. Professor Timothy Yonts will be leading a combined School of Divinity and French department trip to Normandy, France, where students will be able to interact with refugees in the city of Lyon. 

For the first time ever, LU Send will be doing an alumni trip to Israel, which they are calling their pilot trip. Dr. Ed Hindson, the dean of the School of Divinity, will be leading the team as they travel around and learn about Biblical prophecy and the restoration of the land of Israel. The trip will include an extension that goes down to Petra, located in Jordan, as well as participation in the Jerusalem Encounter conference in Jerusalem. 

There will also be a special trip to Israel with seminary and graduate students to learn about both the biblical and
modern Israel. 

Liberty counseling students will take a two-week long trip to Thailand in June to focus on anti-human trafficking and the restoration of such victims. Students on this trip will also be working with aid organizations and workers.

The counseling department will also be going to Kosovo in July to learn about the crisis in what was formerly Yugoslavia and how people cope with trauma.

There will be quite a few trips to Europe this summer. Dr. Bruce Bell, the associate dean of Liberty’s College of General Studies, will be leading a trip to Italy and Greece. Dr. Ben Esswein will be leading a three-country trip to Germany, Italy and Switzerland, mainly focusing on the Reformation, theology and the Bible. 

The School of Business will be traveling to Ireland. There will also be a month-and-a-half-long Guatemala trip with the LU Spanish Institute, an endeavor in which the group will complete a Spanish Intensive. The American Sign Language Institute will also be going to Guatemala in May
to do ASL. 

The School of Aviation will be traveling to Papua New Guinea to interact with bush pilots and will see how ministry is done through aviation in those remote bush areas. There will be a social work and psychology trip going to Greece in July that will also be working with refugees. 

Lastly, the Department of Psychology will travel to Portugal and South Korea in two separate trips in June. 

The summer G5 trips to Spain have been postponed due to lack of recruitment, but they will be running on the next academic calendar. 

“All of our trips have some sort of emotional component to them, and there’s fruit to that. We’ve seen because of the unique opportunities we have with working with researchers in different institutions as an academic institution, that it doesn’t overshadow the real-life change that we’re seeing in our own students, and also in the people they interact with,” Welch said. “We have had many people come to know the Lord because of our students.”

For more information on LU Send trips this summer, visit https://www.liberty.edu/osd/lu-send/.