There is a second squad launching this fall, and their year begins in a place with a long memory.

For the next nine months, Fall Gap Year Squad 2 will follow a route through five countries: Greece, the Czech Republic, Thailand, Malaysia, and then Guatemala, where they will close out the year at our Adventures base. Some of you reading this raised one of these young adults, and you taught them to ride a bike not so long ago and are now watching them board a plane. Others of you have watched them grow up from a few rows back at church, or sat across from them in a small group, or simply love following a new squad the moment it launches. However you got here, you are part of the crowd standing behind them, and there is real power in a crowd that prays. This post is your invitation to send them well.

Let me tell you about where they land first.

They Begin in Greece

Start with a bit of history. Around two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul spent time in a Greek city called Thessalonica, preached the Gospel there, and later mailed two letters back to the little church he had left behind. We still turn to those letters on Sunday mornings. First and Second Thessalonians.

That city still stands. These kids are about to walk its streets.

Today Thessaloniki is home to more than a million people, and fewer than one in two hundred of them would call themselves an evangelical believer. The place Paul wrote to with such warmth is now one of the hardest-to-reach corners of Europe. Squad 2 gets the remarkable assignment of carrying the same good news back to the same city, two millennia later.

Their partners in that work are the team at Hope for Greece, a mission started by Hope Church to plant a lasting Christian community right in the middle of the city. The approach is slow, personal, and relationship-first, which is exactly what a place like this responds to. Our squad will step into it in four very down-to-earth ways:

• Street evangelism, sharing Christ one real conversation at a time with the people they meet.

• Coffee meet-ups, where an ordinary cup of coffee becomes the setting for an honest conversation about faith.

• Sports ministry, using pick-up basketball and soccer to make friends and open doors.

• Prayer on the streets, being present in the city, praying for the people in it, and showing a place it has not been forgotten.

Notice that none of this asks them to be a professional. It asks them to show up, pay attention, and love people who start out as strangers. That kind of work tends to do as much in the missionary as it does in the city.

Who Is on Squad 2

Who Is Leading Them

These young adults are not going alone. A team of leaders travels the whole route with them, sharing meals and long bus rides, running the debriefs, sitting with them on the hard days, and coaching them to hear God's voice on their own.

Would You Pray for Them

Nothing you can do for this squad matters more than prayer. The requests below come straight from the team.

General Requests:

• Funding over this squad

• Love for the Lord would strengthen their boldness. 

• Pray that our whole team would be unified in Christ as we meet, live with one another, and expand God's Kingdom in the upcoming months. 

• Clarity in the Lord’s voice

Specific Requests:

• Gabrielle Kaiser: Pray for anxiety over new changes and unknowns coming up and that the Lord would meet me in my need with His incomprehensible peace.

Prayers that the Lord would continue to sanctify my heart and bring me closer to Him in this next journey.

Pray that my boldness and courage in Christ would deepen to share His love and Good News with so many people.

Prayers that our whole team would meet fundraising goals and that the Lord's provision would shine through in that.

• Betsy-Cate: that I can keep my eyes, ears, and heart open to whatever the Lord has for me on the trip and that I can be obedient to His voice when He calls

• Hahna: that I don’t miss what the Lord has to show me in the next few weeks, and to keep my eyes fixed on only Him!

• Jenna: that I would be able to remain rooted in Jesus and draw closer to Him and His will for me, and that I would be able to withstand the attacks of the enemy and the lies he speaks, and remember that God has called me to this. And also to walk in love! 

• Carli: that I would be able to leave every comfort at the feet of Jesus and choose to pick up my cross instead. Pray that I can continue to be called deeper into challenging obedience on the field. That this time for the Lord is stretching and faith building.

You will not be left guessing about how they are doing. Squad 2 will post from the field all year, sharing what they see, what surprises them, and what God is stirring in them along the way. Reading those updates is a bigger encouragement to them than you might imagine; a young missionary halfway around the world never forgets that people at home are paying attention.

This is the link to The World Race blog page. You can look up any participant on this page.

Pray for them. Read what they write. Drop them a message when a story moves you. You are not on the sidelines of this year; you are part of it.

Thank you for standing with them. It matters more than you know.