This year there are three Young Adults in Global Mission serving around the world from the Southeastern Iowa Synod. We’ll be doing a three-part series on each of these young leaders so we can in prayer for them as they minister in different contexts.
About Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM)
The ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission program invites ELCA young adults ages 21-29 into a transformative, year-long journey in international service. As they offer themselves in service, ELCA young adults are shaped by the witness of our global neighbors. They share in the journeys of companion churches and organizations in one of nine countries around the world.
A year of service through the Young Adults in Global Mission program invites young adults to become the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, providing critical support to ministries and projects in communities of need. It also invites volunteers into a journey of self-reflection, providing space to consider their sense of identity, God’s work in the world, and their place within it all.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRf4hsS5Utc&list=PLNDmVwhz-M35HQTZWFZm-ZZhHjyzWnrLC&index=1[/youtube]
Southeastern Iowa YAGM, Christina Andeweg
Christina Andeweg, a YAGM serving in 
Jerusalem/West Bank, was baptized and raised at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines. She graduated in 2014 from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she studied political science and Middle Eastern studies. After graduating from St. Olaf, she did Lutheran Volunteer Corps in Baltimore, Maryland, where she served at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in its Access to Justice program, advocating for migrants seeking humanitarian protection in the United States.
She chose to do another year of service with YAGM because she wanted to continue to explore the ways God is working through her in her vocation. In thinking about what international service means as a 23 year old coming from the United States, she was also deeply inspired and encouraged by the ELCA’s accompaniment model approach to global missions.
In Jerusalem/West Bank, Christina will be working with early elementary children at two schools: Dar al-Kalima in Bethlehem and the Evangelical Lutheran School in Beit Sahour. She is most excited to work on her (fledgling) Arabic skills and to be challenged further in her sense of self and how she sees herself in the world, particularly in relationship with and accompaniment of our brothers and sisters of the ELCJHL and its ministries. She is also looking forward to meeting her host family who has a four-year-old son and a two-week-old baby boy!
Despite some setbacks in the visa process for the J/WB volunteers, meaning that they won’t arrive in Jerusalem until September 16, God’s presence has been felt through the support of all of the wonderful YAGM staff, each volunteer’s sending communities, and through the stories of excitement and anticipation from the communities which whom each YAGM will be serving.
You can pray for Christina and her fellow YAGMs in Jerusalem and the West Bank by praying for political and social stability in the region; courage and patience as they begin to work with their host families and communities. For their work and service to be impactful and meaningful.
To support Christina and the YAGM program click here