Communication

Pre-Summer

You will periodically receive email letters called “Royal Servants Presummer…”  We include practical and spiritual insights for you as you prepare for a life-impacting summer with Royal Servants.  We encourage you to take a look!

Arrival

Royal Servants procedure is to require every student who is under 18 years of age, or a graduating senior, to call home before boarding the shuttle bus to our meeting place at the church.  However, every once in a while, we may be running late due to flight delays, and calls home from the airport may not be possible.  In this case, you will call home from the church, or just after your arrival at Training Camp.

Training Camp

Outside of an emergency, you will not receive phone calls at Training Camp.  We are in a camp setting, phone facilities are limited and are on a fast, tight schedule.

If an emergency occurs on our end, the Trip Leader will contact your parent/guardian as soon as is physically possible.

Mail: Your parents or relatives may send you care packages at Training Camp.  Contents of care packages can include favorite candy, chips, snacks, etc.  Ask them not to send large items.  You will have very limited room in your packs, as well as a weight allowance.  Make sure your family and friends send any letters or packages in time!  Training Camp tear down begins early on the morning of July 1, 2012, and anything that arrives that day or afterwards will be returned by the Post Office.

Email: We will allow students to receive emails at Training Camp.  However, you will not be able to send email home.  This service will be extended to immediate family members only (mom, dad, siblings, and grandparents).  Royal Servants will provide email instructions closer to the summer.

Overseas

There are three forms of communication while overseas: mail, email, and phone.

Mail: We cannot guarantee that letters, especially packages, will get to their intended destination.  Letters usually arrive, but packages often never arrive at all.  So we are asking that your family does not send packages to you overseas; only letters or cards.

The mailing address(es), when available, will be in the itinerary we will send to you before the summer begins.

Email: Though it is generally available, we cannot guarantee that email will be possible.  EuroQuest teams experience the most problems, since there are few internet cafes in Europe, as well as the fact that they are frequently on the road.  Many third-world countries experience frequent issues with their communications systems, and China often filters incoming and outgoing mail.  Make sure you have your parents’ email address before you leave home!

Important: A Trip Leader may choose to limit a team’s access to the internet and email.  With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, we have found many students spending the majority of their free time, not emailing mom and dad, but catching up with all their friends at home.  This is not necessarily bad, except when they spend time on the internet instead of devoting time working on their contacting home, working on memorization, doing laundry, or simply hanging out with the team!  Even a student with the best intentions can get distracted and become homesick when they have too much access to life at home.  A friends’ breakup with a boyfriend can create a mini-crisis for some girls.  They then start to “go home” emotionally and begin to lose focus on whey they are on the field; their attitude suffers, and instead of finishing well, they conclude the project half-heartedly.  Putting the internet on hiatus will only be done if the Trip Leader feels that it has become a distraction and is negatively affecting the team.

Phone Cards: Some teams have access to telephones, and some may not. Even if available, phone calls may not be the best method of communication. If you do choose to buy a phone card, be sure to purchase a major-brand phone card, such as AT&T or MCI (Sprint no longer works overseas).  Off-brand cards often do not work, despite what they advertise.  Minutes go fast on international calls, so you may want to talk to your parents and establish calling guidelines.  Also, do thorough research to get “overseas access codes” and dialing instructions for the country(or countries) you will be in before Training Camp so that you will not get overseas and find out you are unable to use the card.  (Phone cards will not work in Nepal, India, and Sierra Leone)

Note: Phone cards work well while traveling in the US, in place of cell phones (to call from airports, etc.)

Post-Summer

After the summer, you will receive letters from us helping you continue to debrief our experience and encourage you after your trip.  You will, however, likely continue communication with some members of your team through emails, letters, and phone calls for months, even years, after your trip!

Weekly Team Updates

Once Training Camp starts, Royal Servants sends out twice-weekly team updates via email.  The reports start at camp and continue throughout the entire summer.  Once the teams get to their international destinations, they will be written from the perspective of the Team Leader and/or the leadership team.  This is a great way to know what is happening on the team from the leadership’s perspective.  Any family member, friend, or supporter can sign up for the email updates on the Reign Ministries e-news page.

No Cell Phone Policy

Royal Servants has a no-use cell phone policy on all of the mission trips, either in the U.S. or overseas.  You can bring your phone to make calls during travel to and from the mission trip.  However, we will ask that you surrender the phone’s battery upon check-in at the beginning of the summer.  You will get the battery for the day the team is departing overseas so you can call home.  This will give you one last chance to talk with your parents before the international portion of your ministry.  The battery will be returned at the end of the mission trip, on the day of departure to the states.

If the phone does not have a removable battery (iPhone), we cannot bring it on the mission trip and will have to send it home from Training Camp.  In this case, we suggest that you get a phone card so that they can make a call from a public phone.