Episode 19: Let Me Take You to Mumbai: What a Vision Trip Actually Looks Like

SUMMER SHORT-TERM TRIP SERIES: VISION TRIPS

Rather than tell you the difference between a Vision Trip and a Professional Trip and a Survey Trip (the three trip types), I want to show you what a Short-Term Vision Trip actually looks like.

Not a slide presentation. Not a bullet-point list of activities.

A real trip, with real moments, that did something real to everyone who went. I'll illustrate the true aspects of a great Vision Trip by showing you what it looked like to Vision Trip to Mumbai.

In this episode I take you with me to Mumbai — one of the top ten largest cities in the world, home to about twenty-two million people, a majority Hindu and Muslim population, where families from every unreached people group in India likely live.

I walk you through the Red Light District and introduce you to Sonita, Veronica, and Asha — three women running a one-room community center in the heart of the red light district where fifty-one women gained freedom last year. 

I introduce you to the Dhavari slum, one of the largest in the world with 700,000 souls living on about a mile and a half of land.

I tell you about Titus — a man of peace who pulled us off the street and into his home for tea. And I take you to the rooftop prayer meeting where we got on our knees and prayed Isaiah 58 over a city of twenty-two million.

Woven throughout, I talk about:

✅ Why short-term teams cannot do in ten days what may take ten years to do — and why that's actually freeing

✅ The poverty alleviation caution: what we did NOT do in that red light district, and why it matters

✅ The naming problem: why calling domestic youth service trips "mission trips" creates confusion and false expectations

✅ What a vision trip done well actually produces — and the right way to talk about what you saw when you come home

RESOURCES mentioned in this episode:

✔️ Mumbai Photo Essay and Instagram Stories Highlight Reel

✔️ Search for #MumbaiPhotoEssay2019 on Instagram

✔️ Across the Street and Around the World Book (Chapter 7: Short Term Trips)

✔️ Get the Trip Type Checklist

✔️ Use the Neighbors and Nations Course to train well before the trip.

✔️ Free One Hour Training: Offer Jesus Naturally to Your Neighbors & the Nations

Next episode: Professional Trips  — real stories of real people who used their specific skills overseas, and what happened.