Mentoring, Missions and Milligan
Travis and Emily Weeks work with the CMF church-planting team in Ethiopia, where they have been since 2013. They serve church leaders and believers among the Oromo, Gumuz, Shakka, and Karo peoples. They also support the international community in Addis Ababa. As part of their furlough in the U.S., they are serving at Milligan University. Below, Travis shares what their time there looks like.
Our family has served with CMF’s church catalyst team in Ethiopia for the past twelve years. This fall, however, ministry looks quite different as we step into a new role as Milligan University’s Missionaries in Residence. Instead of driving our 4x4 out to remote villages, we now walk the sidewalks of a beautifully manicured campus. And rather than teaching Ethiopian pastors – most of whom are older than me – I’m figuring out how to relate to students less than half my age (a different kind of cross-cultural work 🙂). One thing hasn’t changed, though: many of the best conversations about life and ministry still happen over endless cups of coffee (which is just fine with me!).
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to mentor and teach college students this semester, especially those who are beginning to sense a call to cross-cultural ministry. As a Milligan student in the early 2000’s, I remember well what it felt like to be in their shoes – wanting to serve God wholeheartedly and trying to discern the best way forward. One of the most influential experiences for me during that time was an Introduction to Missions course taught by that year’s missionaries in residence, Kip and Katy Lines, who were serving with CMF in Kenya at that time. Through the CMF/Milligan connection, I discovered CMF’s REACH internship program and spent the summer between my junior and senior year alongside long-term missionaries in Africa. That summer was profoundly formative for my sense of calling.
Later, during my first year of seminary studies, I enjoyed evenings gathered alongside other students in the tiny living room of the “missions house,” where Brian and Tabitha Hauser welcomed students into their home and their lives. They are CMF missionaries who also served as Missionaries in Residence at Milligan University. Those long conversations about faith, mission, and life left a lasting mark on me and many of my peers.
Looking back, I can clearly see how these relationships visiting missionaries and experiences with them laid the initial steps that God used to guide me – and later Emily – toward long-term service with CMF and its church planting ministry in Ethiopia.
We are so grateful that we get to be on this side now, teaching and encouraging students as they make decisions about where they fit into God’s mission in the world.