Under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Face to Face International specializes in building world missions commitment by offering a wide variety of "face to face," short-term mission opportunities throughout the year. Face to Face assists local churches, missionaries, and mission organizations with their short-term needs as well.
Face to Face takes short-term ministry teams to countries throughout the world, working with in-country hosts (usually missionaries or national leaders) to ensure that a positive and safe experience takes place. These trips are usually one to three weeks long, allowing short-termers to use their vacation, comp, and/or holiday time to assist in mission projects.
These ministry trips offer a variety of opportunities. Some ministry teams go as vision trips to help expand the vision for world missions by seeing what God is doing in a particular country or countries. Other teams go as work project trips to focus on a particular work project such as a school, church, medical/dental clinic, hospital, nutrition center, camp, Bible college, etc. These groups may do construction, evangelism, Bible training or whatever is necessary to assist the missionaries and the national leaders.
At Face to Face International, we assure you that we conduct this ministry according to the values which follow:
- Accountability: Standing before God and others with complete openness.
- Respect: Leading the way in developing mutually respectful relationships.
- Integrity: Conducting ourselves with the highest degree of moral purity and honesty.
- Trustworthiness: Treating every donation as a sacred trust from the Lord.
- Effectiveness: Staying lean administratively so that we can maximize short-term ministry.
- Attitude: Maintaining a positive, can-do attitude.
- Excellence: Recruiting staff with tender hearts toward God and proven ministry skills.
- Flexibility: Embracing flexibility while resisting rigidity.
Face to Face International was founded out of love and concern for the baby-boomer and baby-buster generations, those people who were born between 1945 and 1983. Unlike previous generations, "boomers" and "busters" crave "face to face," hands-on experiences on the mission field.
The vision to serve those interested in short-term mission trips was realized by three families. One of those families, the Orvises, caught this vision first in 1992. Dr. Don Orvis, who was serving as North American Director at Medical Ambassadors International in Modesto, California, at the time, and his wife Nancy, co-led a medical team of 19 people to Guatemala that fall, and the results of that trip were phenomenal.
Their vision grew and became a reality in 1995, when the burden of these three families came together in the establishment of Face to Face International. In April 1996, Dr. Orvis was called as the first president and CEO, and an office was opened officially in Mesa, Arizona.
Dr. Orvis, an ordained minister, speaks regularly in churches across the United States. Before coming to Face to Face International, Dr. Orvis served at Medical Ambassadors International for five years. Before that, he served on the tenured faculty and administration at Denver Seminary for 18 years.
When the three founding families established Face to Face International, their philosophy was "helping ministry teams come ‘face to face’ with missions."
1. Local Churches: Helping local churches to organize and to send out ministry teams on mission trips;
2. Missionaries: Bringing ministry teams to the mission field to help local missionaries with the needs at hand;
3. Mission Organizations: Working in cooperation with mission organizations to provide necessary services for getting their ministry teams to the mission field.
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