(Radio Iowa) – Students from Northwestern College in Orange City are heading out this week for spring break — but their trips are working mission trips — not a chance to sit on a beach and soak up the sun. Northwestern director of admissions, Patrick Hummel says they 13 trips planned this year including four international trips Hummel says all the students volunteer for the trips and about 43 percent of graduates do a spring trip. He says students are working to help others and they benefit from being in places that are culturally different from their own and where they grew up.

He says students join teams and aren’t necessarily paired up with friends, so they get the added benefit of developing new friends on campus — and he says it connects them in new ways and in different ways.