5 Fun Facts About YMI

1. We pre-trip every location we send to.  What does that mean?  It means that before any team or intern goes out on their mission trip through YMI, we take the time to personally invest in their trip by sending a staff member ahead of them.  This person will spend at least 48 hours with the missionary the team or intern will be received by.  We believe that this time is more valuable than any phone call, email thread or Skype and it makes us confident that our participants will be doing Gospel-centered work abroad.

L to R: John + Brian (2 YMI Staff) and Keith (1 awesome volunteer) are currently traveling through Asia pre-tripping sites in the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea.

2. We have 2 main offices - One that is YMI's Headquarters in Tacoma, Washington and one that is BASE Sports Ministy's Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  In the last year, YMI added a specific division dedicated to growing sports ministry as a way to reach out to local churches and equip them to reach out to their communities.  Nathan is the Washington State Athletic Director for BASE.  Nathan is able to work remotely, since his main office is in Colorado Springs, but his ministry area is Washington.  

Last year, much discussion surrounded coming up with the BASE logo.  We're pretty pleased with how it turned out!

3. The median age of our YMI staff is 23 years old.  You know how we're YOUTH Missions International?  Yeah, well, we take that seriously.

L to R: Garrett (Bay Area Mission Mobilizer), Lis (Southern California Mission Mobilizer), Emily (YMI College Specialist & newest staff member) and Taylor (Executive Assistant)

4. Staff meetings currently involve three states & we have staff members in a total of 5 states.  The main office in Washington, Drew and Tim (BASE) in Colorado and me in Oregon.  The non-Washington people video chat in through Google Hangout and staff meeting proceeds as usual.  It's pretty incredible to study God's word together, pray with and for each other, and hear what God is doing not only around the world, but in our own country.  

These are all the areas where we currently have staff living and working.

5. The YMI office in Tacoma is located on UW Tacoma's campus.  We share a building entrance with their library and we get to have the beautiful view of their campus out our windows.  It's fun to be able to take lunch break outside on the HUGE steps or take a 15 minute break to stroll down to the waterfront.  We are blessed to work where we do.

The view out one of our many office windows.  Wow.