The young woman’s eyes looked empty as she spoke. The tsunami had killed her children and her husband — and maybe it would kill the baby inside of her. All of the water she had swallowed was now burning in her stomach and making her sick. Charis Jones, 16 at the time, translated the Indonesian into English for the doctor, hoping he would figure out what was wrong. “This baby was her only tie to her family,” Charis says.

That moment in 2004 was one of the things that got Charis to start thinking about nursing, instead of being a Bible translator like her parents. After the tsunami, Charis’ family traveled from their home in the Philippines to Indonesia, where they used to live and knew the language, in order to volunteer.

Now, a senior and nursing major, Charis spent her summer interning in the neurological ICU at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The floor has been the top neuro ICU in the country for the past 17 years.

At the Mayo Clinic, Charis worked 12 Hour shifts both in the day and at night.

Whenever she woke up, she would think, I get to spend my whole day helping people!

“Thinking that at 5:40 a.m. was definitely confirmation that this is what I’m supposed to do,” she says.

One day an Indonesian man was admitted into the hospital and none of the nurses or doctors could communicate with him, so they called Charis over. His tired eyes moved with recognition as she spoke to him in Indonesian, even though he couldn’t respond. At one point the pressure inside his brain increased rapidly and he lost responsiveness. Charis and the team had to hyperventilate him and initiate a special IV drip.

She watched the brain pressure drop on the monitor, and once it got close to normal he opened his eyes. “It was amazing,” she says. “I love getting
hands-on practice, because this is something I'm going to do with
real people my whole life.”

Their workouts were only one element of training. Equally important? Creating roadtrip personas and hairstyles. “It turns out that biking all day is pretty boring,” says Evan Dull. At least he had his best friends and flowing locks while cycling some 4,000 miles across the country. Meet the Orca Alliance, comprised of Jeff “the muscle” Dull, Dylan “the brains” Chapman, Patrick “the wildcard” McPhee, and Evan, the brother with “the looks.”

One of the first cyclists they met on their way to Yorktown, Virginia, was Mike, a nomad who has biked about 40 miles a day for the past five-and-a-half years. “He encouraged us to slow down and enjoy the ride,” Patrick says. “We didn’t meet anyone who was trying to do this as fast as us.”

The town of Dayville, Oregon, ended up being a friend all by itself. The grocery store gave them free bananas. The Dayville Presbyterian Church let them stay, eat, and shower for free, and someone from the church even drove 10 miles to bring them a lost towel.

A more disappointing stop in Oregon was Mitchell, population 175. Almost everything in the grocery store was expired. They bought instant mashed potatoes, instant stuffing, and hot dogs, mixed it together and called it gumbo.

The Alliance carried more gear than most of the bikers they saw — about 45 pounds per person, which includes the tent, food, camping equipment, etc. A lot of other cyclists either stay in hotels or hire a vehicle to carry their gear and set up camp at each stop. The guys put in a lot of miles before the trip and didn't expect packing gear to be as difficult as it was. “A 7,000-foot mountain pass looks a lot different on paper,” Jeff says, adding that the guys equate biking for 80 miles a day with working a full-time job.

“It’s like bussing tables for 10 hours,” Patrick chimes in. “It’s easy to get angry and smell funny.”

But even so, setting up camp and hanging out at the end of the day quickly became the best part of the trip. Other highlights: going to Yellowstone, summiting Colorado’s Hoosier’s Pass (11,542 feet), the flats of Kansas, and seeing the Atlantic Ocean.

But will they do it again?
Probably not.

“It was the trip of a lifetime,” Jeff says. “Hopefully I only get to do it once this lifetime though … I don’t know if I could handle America again.”

It was summer 2007 and Kevin Sayson, then 17, wanted to hang out with his girlfriend or play games with his friends in Gresham, Oregon — not go on a mission trip. But his parents were going to Serbia with other adults from church and invited him to come along. "We always hoped that Kevin would have a heart for the world," his dad, Bob Sayson, says. Kevin decided to go, even though at the time two weeks of helping with an English camp sounded like eternity.

Kevin didn’t know much about the small, Eastern European country. During pre-trip meetings, he learned about the decades of communism, the recent conflicts, and the 78 days of bombing in 1999. When he got to camp near Novi Sad, the kids his age intimidated him. Milica, for example, was nothing like his friends in rural Oregon. She had a Mohawk, piercings, combat boots, and smoked cigarettes. But Kevin quickly became friends with her and the other kids too.

"Serbia has the most passionate, energetic, and social people I have ever met," Kevin says. So of course, at the end of two weeks of crafts, tennis games, and even English lessons, he did not want to leave.

The next year he returned with Josiah Venture, the organization that runs the camps. The camps focus on building relationships with youth and later connecting them to local churches. Kevin got to discover more of the effects of communism and growing up during war.

"I feel like the youth I’ve met are all searching for something," Kevin says. "I see them filling this need with other things, but in the end, Jesus is the answer."

He did not see Milicia that year and found out that she was addicted to heroin. The people at camp were concerned and praying for her. During the school year, Kevin stayed connected with his friends in Serbia over Facebook. And once again in the summer, he was back.

This time, so was Milica. She had accepted Christ and gone through rehab. "You could tell that the drugs had an effect on her," Kevin says. "But she was excited to follow Jesus."

Milica was just one of the friends that he was excited to see this past summer as he returned for a fourth time. Now a junior at SPU, Kevin hopes to major in international business. "Each year people get more and more open to the gospel because God is working," he says. His dad couldn’t be more proud. "I'm just so glad that our son gets to be a part of what the Lord’s doing," he says.