Every Saturday morning, between 150 and 200 kids gather on a small cement court to color pictures, play soccer, and watch puppets, but most importantly, to hear the Word of God.  Each child has their own story, their own background; but all of them have had a hard life.  These kids are growing up in a community on the fringe of Guadalajara, Mexico, a city with a metropolitan population of 10 million.  The area, known as El Collí, is an impoverished neighborhood where drug abuse, alcoholism, and physical abuse are a part of everyday life for almost every child. Strict Catholicism dominates the city and very few have ever heard the message of a God who desires to have a personal and intimate relationship with them.  It is this message that the students of Engage in Missions bring to the community each week, showing them the love and hope that is found in Jesus Christ.

In January of 2007, Engage students began playing soccer in an open dirt field that was used as the neighbor-hood dump, inviting any child who happened to be walking by to join them.  Afterwards, they would hand out sandwiches and water to the kids while sharing Christ with them.  This “feeding program” has been expanding ever since then, and today it is a thriving ministry.  Each week, these kids are provided with food, games, love, and the Word of God.  La Comunindad Cristiana Esmirna, a Mexican A/G church from the other side of the city, has been working alongside Engage to provide a Bible study for mothers of the children who come to the program each week.  Not a single A/G church exists in the area of El Collí.  It is the ultimate goal of Engage to plant a church in this neighborhood that will be able to disciple the many people that are coming to Christ each week during the feeding program.  The planting of a church in this area would also open the door for a Latin America Child Care school to provide education to hundreds of children who are otherwise unable to afford it.

The feeding program is just one of the various ministry opportunities Engage in Missions offers.  From week to week, Engage students are consistently integrated into a variety of ministry experiences, including Chi Alpha university ministry, sidewalk Sunday schools, church planting, teaching English as a second language, feeding programs, homeless ministry, and leading short-term missions trip teams.  Immersed in local church coopera-tion, as well as actively living and working alongside Generally Appointed missionaries from the Assemblies of God, students are offered a first-hand perspective of missions life and practicum in ways that a book could only hope to reveal.

Southwestern Assemblies of God University (SAGU) has always been on the cutting edge of distance education, providing missionaries with a means of study regardless of location. Coupled by their desire to promote ground-breaking forms of ministry, SAGU and Engage in Missions have come together to provide an entirely new type of missions internship, giving first- and second-year college students the opportunity to receive an ex-tended experience in cross-cultural missions while continuing a formal college education. Within the two-year internship, students may receive a full Associate of Arts degree from SAGU as well as local language studies through credit-transferable universities in their country of residence.  Currently, Engage has 10 students in the program studying with SAGU.  Engage in Missions is directed by AGWM missionaries Steve and Amy Shoop in Guadalajara, Mexico.

For more information about the program, or to request an application, please visit www.sagu.edu/engage or www.engageinmissions.com.