Never A.
High price, low quality
This mission experience charges a large amount of money with air fare plus $1,000 per person, but does not deliver comfortable lodging, proximity to the work site, reliable internet, or an adequate amount of food. The lodging was not a hotel, as was advertised on the website, but was a primitive retreat center located 1 hour drive (1 way) from the job site. Each day we spent over 2 hours (with traffic it could take 1.5 hours to return to the lodging) in a hot, bumpy bus on winding roads. Multiple people got carsick on these long bus rides, using the bus trashcan to throw up as needed. When checking comparable places to stay in the capital city, the internet searches showed us that we could have been housed right in the capital city, walking distance from the job site, for half the price the mission charges. The food was rationed out, with the sullen workers looking on at any second helpings taken. Leftover food was rushed off to hiding places and driven away by the workers instead of letting us eat all we wanted. We had been working hard all day and were hungry. There were no close restaurants walking distance from the lodging. We were not allowed to leave the campus after suppertime. There was nothing to do on campus. No game rooms, no gathering place with comfortable chairs, but only the dining room with its plastic chairs and tables and nothing to do. The group was never brought together as a cohesive unit by the pastor. The group was separated into factions and cliques with no attempt made to get people to meet other workers on the trip. Communication was sadly lacking with no schedule communicated before the trip, no group texts used to update folks on the changing schedule, and no WhatsApp group made to keep us in the loop when times for meals were changed. Before the trip, communication with the Mission Discovery workers was nonexistent. Expectations were not communicated ahead of time, such as what arrival time we were expected to be at the airport. This was told to our group in an email 2 days before our day to meet up. This was not sufficient time to redo trip plans, resulting in a bad start to the trip with Mission Discovery workers being irritated that our group was not arriving within their time window. (We arrived 1 hour later due to already scheduled travel plans). The retreat center was dorm rooms, not equipped for families to sleep there. The beds were hard and the pillows thick and hard. There were no double beds for couples to sleep together. There was no housing for a single in our group who came by herself. The internet did not work inside the room, but only outside if you held your phone up high in a few designated spots on the retreat center. The Mission discovery workers also requested that we each take a turn at outdoor painting work and then trade for the indoor day care work. Some of us did not bring paint clothes since we were under the impression that we would only help indoors with the children. Others who were skilled in manual labor construction jobs had been planning to only work outdoors. The job placements should have taken into account our own individual talents and skills, but did not. A big issue was the false advertising on Mission Discovery's website that this was a trip suitable for families. It was not a place for families to help out, unless all the children were ten years old, as it turned out. This should have been communicated on the website and we would not have gone on this trip.