SEMMES, Ala. (WKRG) — Joining us this morning is Eric Sexton with Semmes First Baptist Church. We wanted to talk about how you plan an international mission trip. How do you do it?

Guest: Well, it starts by allowing the Lord to guide you. You don’t want to begin this process without God leading you in this direction.

And then next you start to think, what? Where are our skillsets as a pastor of a church? What are my people good at? And what are their strengths?

And then you try to find a partner with that, a country or something.

What country? Where can we best meet their needs?

Anchor: How do you narrow down a country?

Guest: To me, you look again at: where can my team go? What can my team do? And what would be the best partnership? Because we want it to be a partnership between our church, our team, and the group that we’re working with overseas.

Anchor: How do you make sure it’s safe? Because some nations are not necessarily welcoming to Christians. Others are. But how do you know your safety is good?

Guest: Well, I think the first thing you have to do is understand there’s always going to be risk. There’s nowhere you can go where you’re not going to experience some risk.

But you do your homework. You research.

There are organizations here in the United States that you can partner with that can kind of help; you know, do’s and don’ts.

And it’s also important to work with the local representatives, the international church that you may be working with, or the organization that you’re working with. They can help you with certain safety features as well.

Anchor: Talk to me about some of the projects that you may work on for an international trip. What essentially do you do in a lot of these cases?

Guest: Well, the beauty of an international mission trip is there are so many different things you can do.

You can do just evangelism outreaches. You can look for different projects with that international church, perhaps a construction, perhaps a vacation, Bible school, perhaps an activity with their youth.

There are lots of things that you can do on medical mission trips as well.