This month, we focus on a vital part of our workforce, our student missionaries.

This is not a detour from our usual business; it is a journey back to our roots. Like almost every other significant missionary movement in the last 150 years, the seed that would become AFM first took root in the minds of students. In 1984, a group of students at Andrews University began meeting and praying together about a singular idea that burned in their hearts—an Adventist mission society dedicated to reaching the world’s unreached people groups.

Students launched AFM 33 years ago, and students have remained at the core of our ministry ever since. While we have sent more than 180 career missionaries into the field, we have commissioned more than 420 student and short-term missionaries to the front lines.

The traits that led students to start AFM are the same that continue to make them indispensable to our work:

1) Students are learners. There is no other way to thrive in the realm of the unknown on the cutting edge of missions.

2) Students are unaware that they can’t do impossible things, stepping far beyond their comfort zone and depending on divine power every day.
3) Students breathe new life into mission projects. The wave of positive energy, kindness, caring and joy they bring to the front lines lifts the hearts of battle-weary career missionaries.

4) Students help relieve career missionary burdens and reach out to young people. Read on for numerous examples.

If you are a student, be a blessing by giving a year to missions.

If you are a giver, multiply that blessing by giving to the AFM Student Missions Fund.

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