Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2013 | Page 29

While serving as career missionaries in Senegal, Rodney Duttweiler ’87
(left) and his wife Kathy Smith Duttweiler ’87 have hosted many short-term
missions teams, including members of Wheaton’s football team.

The reason? Short-term missions (STMs). Recent studies suggest
more than two million Americans go on such trips each year.
“I hadn’t realized how widespread the phenomenon had become and
how diverse the trips were,” says Dr. Howell. “Yet I began to see that,
whether Inner Mongolia or Paris, people talked and thought about
these different trips in a similar way.”
Not only did these trips produce similar photos of “North
Americans engaged in manual labor” and “a single white
face surrounded by brown-faced groups of smiling children,” but Dr.
Howell also discovered a surprisingly common narrative: “I thought I
had a lot to give, but I ended up receiving a lot more.”
He was intrigued: Where did this common narrative come from?
How was it