Mission Trip :: Washington D.C

Tomorrow we will depart for our spring break mission trip to Washington D.C. We will travel 12 hours via church van to our final destination in the north part of the city. We will stay at a church in the evenings and spend our days immersed in the urban culture of D.C. We will work with various organizations and ministries that are already established in the community. We are excited for God to use us in big ways this week. We ask that you lift us up in prayer as we travel and spend time sharing the Good news with the people of D.C. Please also pray for God to be working in the hearts of those that we meet. Pray that their hearts will be softened and that they will be blessed by our presence in their lives and ultimately that they will see the light of Jesus shining through us and our actions. Please pray for our students, Alyssa, Alex, Foo and Nick as they venture out of their comfort zones and prepare to love on the people of D.C. We are excited to grow together with them and we look forward to sharing our experiences with all of you when we return.

Here are some facts from the Center for Student Missions website about Washington D.C.

• Washington, DC is home to 530,000 people, 66% of whom are African-American and an additional 16% are persons of color. The homeless population in
• Washington, DC is a southern city. Culturally, D.C. is “southern” in its atmosphere, politics, interests and relationships.
• Washington, DC has struggled with the issue of homelessness since the 1880’s. Between 1860 and 1880, D.C.’s population soared from 40,000 to 120,000. Completely overwhelming the city’s infrastructure, these new arrivals, mostly freed slaves from the former Confederacy, subsisted in severely overcrowded, disease-ridden, and impoverished conditions. D.C.’s first building and health codes were written in 1880 to cope with this crisis.
• D.C. is currently estimated between 15,000 and 40,000.
• Since 1989, nearly 100,000 people have moved out of the District. Left behind are the most impoverished segment of the population--with the exception of the high-income residents of the trendy Georgetown neighborhood.
• D.C. has a small tax base for its size, due to the fact that the federal government owns much of the land in the district—all of it tax-exempt. This shrunken tax base, combined with the flight of more affluent people to the suburbs, poor management by many district agencies, and other factors, has resulted in D.C. being on the verge of economic meltdown.
• Washington, DC spends more money per student than most school districts in the U.S., yet has one of the poorest rates of return on its investment. In the 8th Ward (Anacostia), of every 100 students that start high school, only 13 will graduate on time. They’ll depart with a diploma and an average 4th to 5th-grade reading level.