Early in Scott Bessenecker’s book, "The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor," you meet David Von Stroh. He’s holding a child on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, and both are waving at the camera.
Bessenecker is the director of Global Projects for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which has a presence on 530 college campuses. Its national offices are in Madison. He contends in his book that people like Von Stroh are part of "a missional, monastic-like order" of young men and women "burning with a passion to serve the destitute in slum communities of the developing world."