NATCHEZ — Caitlyn Hendricks and Julie White couldn’t recall the walk to volunteer for separate mission trips.

On a Wednesday evening last October, Hendricks and White observed and paid close attention to a message their college minister gave them.

He told the congregation the North American Mission Board contacted him and wanted him to encourage his youth members at the Louisiana Tech Baptist Collegiate Ministry to pick a city and make a leap of faith.

He presented the cities — Portland, Atlanta and Chicago. And that’s the last memory White and Hendricks recollected before Hendricks was standing in front of the Chicago sign and White was standing in front of Atlanta’s.

“I literally stood up and when I looked up I was in front of Atlanta,” White said.

White and Hendricks, who both graduated together at Vidalia High School in 2011 and went on to room together at Louisiana Tech, are finishing up their first week in Atlanta and Chicago, respectively. Each have five weeks to go in the NAMB internship, “Generation Send.”

The goal each has set out to accomplish is to become invested in the community by partnering with local churches and getting involved with their ministeries, which might include witnessing to people in workout classes, community events or recreational clubs.

“No matter where we are, our goal is to engage the local people to build relationships,” Hendricks said. “We enter the community and act like a church planter would when they move to a community.”

Generation Send is in its second year as a NAMB project, so White referred to her and Hendricks as “guinea pigs.”

The idea behind it is to get youth to go into a city that mobilizers and church planters, who are supported by the NAMB, would go to afterward to build churches and spread the gospel. Generation Send individuals lay the ground work in an internship with the idea that those individuals would become mobilizers and develop their own team of 20 or so to invade a new city the ensuing summer.

“The goal is to get to know people and the communities that we’re in and hopefully share the gospel,” White said. “The North American Mission Board will come in behind us and hopefully see the progress that we made, and then, they’ll potentially plant a church in these places. It’s basically to see the needs in the community.”

Hendricks said Chicago has a great community soccer ministry she’ll get involved in, while White hoped to reach out to the homeless in Atlanta. And of course, both strive to bring as many people they can to Christ, but that doesn’t constitute success or failure in the back of their minds.

“My team leader actually challenged us and asked, ‘what would you consider to be a success for you this summer?’” White said. “My answer was, ‘I consider meeting new people and potentially sharing the gospel as a success. If it doesn’t happen, it won’t be counted as a failure. Following God’s call to go to Atlanta is a success to me.’”