The Value of Short Term Mission Trips

Since I've participated in a short term trip to help hold medical clinics in Honduras, I've been asked whether short term mission trips such as these are economically efficient. It may or may not be pertinent that both people who asked this question are business people.

In reflection on this question since then, I think they may be right that at least in the short term that these kind of mission trips may not be most cost efficient way of providing medical services. But I wonder whether the value of these trips are beyond economic calculation. I think the value for both parties is found in the personal contact and love communicated in person between two different cultures.

There's something about the giving of one's self to another that can't be accomplish through the inpersonal giving of money to an agency to do the job. Saying that, I think both have their roles; but that it is a matter of balance.

But I'd be interested in hearing other people's responses to this question.