The month of May has been a much needed time of rest, reflection, and rejuvenation. Here at Salt DSM we had our final Salt Company of the school year on May 5th, which was an incredible ending to the year. As Salt came to a close we were preparing for Summer Salt to start in June and finalizing all the planning of our student missions team leaving for Malaysia. One aspect of this final prep was the simulation that all the Salt Network summer teams go through the week before they take off for their perspective countries.

During this training the volunteers put the teams through a great deal of intentional stress to see how they cope with it and how they operate as a team when it is not easy, as it won’t be when they are in country. As a staff we were not directly helping with the Salt DSM team in their preparation but we were hearing nothing but good gossip about the way in which they were handing themselves, especially the team leader Joel. Joel has been a very strong connection group leader for us all year long and we were so excited when he applied for the overseas team last fall. As we were asking around it was clear that Joel was the right person to be leading this team to Malaysia this summer. Joel was doing a great job of getting the team where they needed to be, all while caring for them really well and never losing sight of the health of the team. We could not be more excited to see the way God is going to use him and the team this summer!

The final thing that we did for our missions team was to send them out with prayer. The team met at Cottage Grove Church, the church that Salt DSM is a ministry of, with all of their luggage and loaded up a van to head to the airport. As they were doing so the entire staff team of Cottage Grove, many family members, and friends gathered around the students to send them out with final prayer and encouragement. There is nothing more impactful that we could give as a final blessing to our students than a group of people who love them dearly and are committed to praying for them this summer.

God has used the people on this team in incredible ways this year in the life of Salt DSM and we know that he is going to continue to do so in and through them this summer as they go out to fulfill the great commission that Jesus laid out in Matthew 28. We ask that you would join us in prayer for this team, that God would keep them safe and provide fertile soil for the gospel to take deep roots in a place where the gospel is not very present.