Bonnie Laycock has swung on jungle vines in Costa Rica and El Salvador, met an African chief in Ghana and discovered pre-Inca pottery in Peru.

But those are just the fringe benefits of what she considers the real payback of her years of mission work: A chance to build or rebuild churches, schools, orphanages, refugee centers, a women's center and more for less fortunate people around the world.

"It's so different than if you just go on vacation somewhere," said Laycock, director of mission work for First United Methodist Church in Wichita.

"You get to meet the people and see the culture, and you realize people are all the same. And guess what we discover? The people that have the least are the most thankful."

Laycock took over her newly created job at the church in 1989. At the time, the church's youths were already active in mission work. But she wanted adults to have the same opportunity.

Today, about 250 church members spend one to three weeks on one of a dozen mission trips the church undertakes outside Wichita each year.

Earlier this year, the church completed its 100th mission. Its teams have been to every state in the nation and more than a dozen foreign countries, from a Hopi Indian reservation to a Kosovo farm to a Zimbabwe village.

Laycock works out of an office decorated with maps and photographs of the mission teams. A telephone, a computer and binders full of information on other countries and states connect her to the world.

Many of the trips are geared toward helping people rebuild after natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Often her contact is the New York-based United Methodist Committee on Relief, which is usually at the scene of disasters as quickly as the Red Cross.

While the Red Cross concentrates on emergency relief, the committee "stays until lives are restored," Laycock said.

A church mission to El Salvador last February and another planned for next summer are designed to help rebuild areas there devastated by a 2001 earthquake.

In addition to promoting, organizing and coordinating the work, Laycock has been on 41 trips herself. She's quick to point out that a few volunteers have been on nearly as many: John Vosburg with 37 and Karen Ramsey with 23. And they, in turn, credit Laycock for generating enthusiasm for missions.

Starting with one work team, the church added two, then three and more. "It snowballed," Vosburg said.

And it's Laycock who has been "the hub of the wheel."

Mission trips, however, don't always go as planned, Laycock admits. That's why team members are urged to "pack flexibility." Expected supplies may be missing, local authorities may not cooperate. Still, the teams have always found useful work that needs doing, she said.

Team members pay their own way, with expenses held down by communal cooking and lodging. Trips in the United States usually cost about $100 per person; those abroad up to $2,000. The church subsidizes the trips on which entire families travel because it believes the experience is so important.

The experience certainly seems to have influenced Laycock's own children. One is in the Peace Corps and another hopes to work for the committee on relief when he finishes college.

"Missions are a way of life," Laycock said.