Team Leader Tuesday spotlight: Blake Allen, Rwanda team leader

Team Leader Tuesday this week is featuring a testimony from team leader Blake Allen who also happens to be the creator of our 127 Campaign website, videos and other elements. You can see some of his other design work on his website here.  Blake and his wife Lindsay lead Visiting Orphans teams to Rwanda and are heavily involved in helping VO partner ministry Best Family Rwanda. To check out this week's 127 Campaign video, go here. 

"Visiting Orphans is a wonderful organization dedicated to seeing lives transformed, both those that go and those that we go to. They do this by equipping and empowering us to GO to the nations, BE focused on relationships, and LOVE like Christ. I have become friends with some of the most amazing people, experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows, and have had the most life-changing orchestration of events because of their trips.

At the beginning of 2012, my wife and I knew God was calling us to do international missions. We were newbies but ready for what God had to show us. Well in July of 2012, we went on our first short-term mission trip to Ethiopia and Rwanda. God wrecked our lives so beautifully. He changed us in ways that we never could have imagined. Since we returned we have started a non-profit with my father-in-law, which aims to align believers together to share the gospel. We have also united a collective that advocates for one of the ministries we connected with called Best Family Rwanda. Outside of these things, we have become very vocal advocates for Visiting Orphans' mission, and that is to simply go and be love. We returned to Rwanda in 2013 and 2014 as team leaders! Our teams were able to partner with Best Family Rwanda and continue to work with them locally, along with giving us the opportunity to connect with the beautiful people we met last year at Noel Orphanage and No. 41. 

Blake & Lindsay's 2014 Rwanda team

I am very passionate about short-term missions, and am fully aware they can do more harm than good. Visiting Orphans desires to partner not only with orphanages (because an ideal world would not need orphanages for orphans), but also with ministries and organizations within the local community. That being said, I can assure you that Visiting Orphans does them right by seeking to stand beside and support long-term missions, assisting them with whatever they say they need. If you are on the fence about going, absolutely sure God is calling you to go, or turned off by short term missions but are curious on why Visiting Orphans is different, please do yourself a favor and check them out!"

- Blake Allen - VO Volunteer Team Leader