01/21/2015

Applications for YAGM program due by Feb 15

Each year, more than 60 ELCA young adults dedicate a year of their life to service alongside the ELCA’s global companions. They are placed in one of nine country programs around the world and take on a variety of roles, from working in a local HIV/AIDS clinic to teaching English to primary students, and assisting with youth ministry in a Lutheran congregation. As they share their gifts of service, these young adults are shaped by the witness of our global neighbors.

I’m writing to you today because of your connections to young adults in our church. We are actively seeking new candidates for the 2015-2016 class of ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission and need your help spreading the word! As the program grows and expands its reach through Always Being Made New: The Campaign for the ELCA, we are striving to diversify our participant base.

To learn more about the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program, I encourage you to watch this video and share it with any young adults you think would be interested.

http://youtu.be/sRf4hsS5Utc?list=PLNDmVwhz-M35HQTZWFZm-ZZhHjyzWnrLC

Candidates should be 21-29 years old and connected to an ELCA congregation, college/university, campus ministry or outdoor ministry. Applications for the program are due Feb. 15, 2015 for service beginning this August. Learn more at www.ELCA.org/yagm.

Serving through the ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission program is both deeply challenging and deeply life-giving for our volunteers and the communities that receive them. In reflecting on her own year of service, one recent alumna shares this: "Throughout this year, I have been continually blessed, challenged, awed and humbled. I have shared in the joys and sorrows of my community, and they have shared in mine. I have been made empty and made vulnerable, only to be filled up again to an even greater fullness. At the end of this journey of ups, downs, triumphs and pains, my heart has made a home in this place."

Please share this video widely with young leaders who might be sensing a call to engage the world in new ways through the Young Adults in Global Mission Program. And may God continue to bless your own life and ministry.

Faithfully,

Rev. Heidi Torgerson-Martinez, director
ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission