c. 2000 Religion News Service

MOBILE, Ala. _ Some people think 16-year-old Josiah Holmes is too young to be a missionary.

The Mobile surfer admits he’s had the same thought.

Just the same, he traveled to Kuching, Malaysia, this summer to share the gospel with everyone from schoolchildren to once-upon-a-time headhunters.

It’s been, he said, “probably my best summer.”

Ordinarily, he would have whiled away his days attending basketball camp, surfing in the Gulf of Mexico, and dining out at Taco Bell and Olive Garden.

Instead, he went to East Malaysia, where he divided his time between praying, preaching and partaking of python. He also tried a delicacy drink known as “bird’s nest,” which is am actual bird’s nest sans bones and feathers, blended with coconut milk. (“I took a couple sips, and that was about it for me,” Holmes confessed.)

Next summer, Holmes plans to do missionary work in the Amazon.

While he acknowledged that some people at home seem put off by his age, he said for many overseas, that’s not the case.

Increasingly, individual clergy members and mainline denominations alike are providing outlets for youths eager to spread the good news on foreign shores.

“I think it’s definitely growing,” said the Rev. Rob Cain, college pastor at the Church at Tuscaloosa, Ala., and a project coordinator and worship leader for the Southern Baptist Convention’s World Changers program.

Since Southern Baptist mission agencies made international mission projects available to teen-agers and college students several years ago, interest has steadily increased, Cain said.

“I think today students have become very serious in their faith,” he said. “Even in our society that we’re living in, they have to make decisions whether they’re going to be real or whether they’re going to play church.”

In the past, Cain said, many people _ including students _ attended worship services simply because it was expected. Today, those same societal pressures do not exist.

“They’re coming out of a hunger and a thirst for Bible knowledge,” he said. “And they’re wanting to make a difference.”

Lauren Carpenter’s desire to make a difference landed her in a small town near San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Last spring, Carpenter, 17, joined 17 other members of St. Paul Episcopal Church in Daphne, Ala., in helping to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Mitch, which struck the area in October of 1998.

“We went down there as a church mission, expecting to teach people,” she said. “We really gained much more knowledge. … They really taught us (to) just enjoy what you have and just don’t take anything for granted, because you never know when you’re going to lose it.”

She added, “It showed me that even if they don’t have material things, they’re still happy in God’s world that he created for them.”

That joy made Carpenter question her world when she got home, she said.

“When I got home, I didn’t even want to be around my friends,” she said. “I didn’t want to be in my room. I just had too much stuff in there. I didn’t listen to my radio. I turned everything off.”

Now, she said, “I’m a lot more laid back. Before then, I was always stressed about school.”

Daniel Reeves, 17, traveled with Carpenter on the trip, which was organized by the relief and development agency of the Episcopal Church. He, too, said he learned a lesson of gratitude.

“I learned to love where I live a lot more,” he said. “I learned that not everyone is as lucky as I am. That was kind of a big thing with me. I realized what I had compared to a lot of other people.”

There was a more explicitly spiritual lesson as well, Reeves said, noting that God “kind of sacrificed the biggest thing that he could. We can give at least a week of our time.”

The reflections are fairly common among returning teen-agers, according to Abagail Nelson, director of Latin American Programs for Episcopal Relief and Development.

“We’ve tapped into a desire on the part of _ usually it’s wealthier suburban kids _ to connect with less fortunate people both at home and abroad,” Nelson said from her New York office.

“The youth groups at the churches are really encouraging that _ the idea of mission work. … With all the privileges that we have, God asks something of us.”

Holmes, the surfer-turned-missionary who traveled to Malaysia with an aunt and uncle who pastor a church in Tulsa, Okla., didn’t travel so much to give back as simply to give his knowledge of the Bible, of God and of salvation.

At home, he said, it’s more difficult for him to evangelize.

Overseas, he said, “People aren’t as skeptical. They received you very well.”

Each day, Holmes said, he would rise at 8 a.m., and leave the hotel where he stayed an hour later. He and his four fellow missionaries would visit homes of individuals who, upon learning of the missionaries’ presence, would ask them to come by and pray. After lunch, Holmes said, they witnessed on the streets of Kuching. At 7 p.m., they’d begin worship in an area Christian church, where they’d remain until 2 or 3 a.m.

“Those people are so hungry,” he said. “Their hunger is, like, so pure and deep.”

For now, Holmes, a member of River of Life Family Church _ a nondenominational congregation where his parents, Randall and Crystal Holmes, serve as pastors _ is home.

Adjustment wasn’t easy, he said, and he’s excited about his trip to Peru next summer.

There, at least, his diet won’t include broiled seaweed and sauteed jellyfish _ he hopes.

AMB END CAMPBELL