Mia Thomas, a college student who grew up at CCC, spent 8 weeks in the summer of 2019 serving with the Christian & Missionary Alliance in a Middle-eastern country on a missions’ internship.

We all long to connect with others; to experience community with those who know us fully and love us deeply. But often, it can be difficult to find those types of relationships, especially in today’s rushed and often superficial, photo-shopped culture. At least, this is what Mia Thomas discovered her first year of college. But God used her loneliness and her longing to draw her closer to Himself and teach her what true, gospel-centered community looks like. 

Mia entered college fully anticipating a wonderful, fulfilling year. “Everyone told me this was where I’d meet my best friends,” she said. But she soon found herself painfully alone. “My roommate left in September, so I was by myself for most of the year,” she said. 

By the time summer came, she convinced herself she didn’t really need community in order to serve and love God, and this motivated her to apply for an internship she knew other college students likely wouldn’t attend. “I assumed I’d be going to Spain,” she said, “where I’d experience the local youth and art culture, the coffee and urban culture. It’d be right on the coast. I was excited.”

When that opportunity fell through, her college asked her, “Where do you want to go now?” She was an international relations major and knew one particular “creative access” country was experiencing a lot of political unrest, so she felt it made sense for her to go there. She wanted to hear stories of the history of the region and conflict between the surrounding areas. 

She knew it’d be an opportunity to show God, but that wasn’t her key motivation, in part because she felt unqualified. “I felt like I had to have my faith life together, especially since I go to a Christian college,” she said. She was doing all the right things, but wasn’t sure how she was doing internally. “I was afraid to dig into that because I felt, having an internship, there were high expectations for me to have an exemplary faith.”

Yet, accepting the opportunity God had placed before her, she used an Internship Grant provided by the CCC Missions department, to spend eight weeks in the Middle East. Working with an organization that offered adult English classes, youth intervention, and leadership training with teens, she and her team co-taught with locals who spoke Arabic. 

While there, she lived with one of three missionary families and interacted with three other college interns. “It was an incredibly strong community in a way I hadn’t experienced before,” she said. “We’d go to one house once a week and make a meal for each other, and we spent an hour having our own worship. That was cool because it had an intergenerational and intercultural aspect. One college intern was from the UK, another from Australia.” 

But perhaps most importantly, that was the time when each of them could talk openly about their faith. She discovered the community she built, not just with the other interns, but with the young adults she taught, was more important than having the right words to say. As a result, she was able to develop incredibly deep relationships in a relatively short period.

She spent a lot of time with the young adults she taught. “We went to the beach at night and just talked. Which was amazing, because though they live on the other side of the world, they had the same questions, hopes, doubts, and dreams as we have. “ 

As they shared their lives with one another, faith naturally entered their conversations. “Faith is a large part of their life, much more than in the US,” Mia said. “People there pray five times a day, so they can hear the calls coming from the mosque. They don’t shy away from those difficult questions; they just want to know what people think and believe.”

Perhaps what struck her most was the intentionality with which they approach their relationships. “They’re not surface level,” Mia said. “They genuinely want to know how you’re doing, how you see God and express that love. It took me back how easy it was to talk about, and how my friends would just bring that up.”

She experienced the joy of being welcomed and drawn close. “Before they even fully knew me, they already loved and accepted me,” she said. 

This experience changed her. She realized a huge part of her loneliness in the United States came from the superficiality of her relationships. “This showed me, at the end of the day, God’s heart is for us to be humble and vulnerable. No fronts. No façade. Just coming as you are and asking deep questions.”

Though she still struggles with loneliness at times, she now approaches her relationships with a different mindset. She’s more intentional to pursue deep and authentic conversations where she and her friends create safe places to ask questions and investigate things related to faith.

That was the type of community she experienced during her summer internship, and that’s the kind of community she longs to create now that she’s home.

Because we all need to feel fully known, fully accepted, and deeply loved. 

To find out more about Missions’ Internship Grants or other mission opportunities, contact Craig Walter at craigw@cccomaha.org.