Irish students and graduates were dispersing all over the globe in the cause of making Jesus famous for all the right reasons. Our European colleagues couldn’t help but notice that so they invited us to help to give this process a turbo-boost.

The idea was that since many young Irish people of our acquaintance had gone on short-term projects we could coordinate their deployment, foster their welfare and upgrade their training. So far, they had gone to places like Zaire (as it then was, now Congo), Bolivia, Algeria, and Poland. We could also provide the same service for other European graduates from the vantage point of a base in Germany.

We followed the logic and were happy with the idea of smoothing the way for our compatriots plus whoever else showed up. But first we would need to go through the exact same cross-cultural training as everybody else. An eclectic…