The requests were for outcomes to focus on the acquisition of skills in language learning, cross-cultural communication, church multiplication, personal spiritual growth and interpersonal and team relations. With the above objectives, participants are assigned to live with or among people who come from their target field culture or one that is similar.
Churches composed of that people become a laboratory for partnership in learning.
Language acquisition tools are applied to initial learning of the field language. A major challenge to implementing the training goals was finding a suitable urban context. Greater Los Angeles meets this challenge by providing an urban laboratory for cross-cultural training almost without peer. Los Angeles is truly one of the world's great mega-cities, with a population of some 8.8 million, including 3.5 million residents in the city itself. It includes an area that contains the city proper and a patchwork of 87 other cities and 120 unincorporated areas.