<h1>Jacob Dalager pay for a one-year mission trip to Malaysia</h1>

As he raises money to pay for a one-year mission trip to Malaysia, 21-year-old Jacob Dalager of Austin is turning to music to help him cover travel expenses.

Dalager, who recently graduated from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., with degrees in trumpet performance and music theory and composition, will hold a fund-raising recital at 2 p.m. July 12 at St. Olaf Lutheran Church in Austin.

"I could have just sent out a letter, but I hate stuffing envelopes," he said. "This way I can get a bit more of a personal connection with the donors."

Dalager already has some experience living abroad. When he was in third grade, his father, then a Lutheran pastor, spent a year leading a church in Bogota, Colombia. When he was in sixth grade, he spent half a year in India after his mother accepted a job as a woodwind teacher at an international school.

Dalager, who is going to Malaysia through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Young Adults in Global Mission program, said he will teach English and music at the Jireh Home for Children in Kota Kinabalu, a city with around 579,000 residents.

"I don't feel called to proselytize, necessarily," he said. "I have a little more modern view that I think there is more than one way to salvation, or what have you. If they put me in a situation where I'd have to do that, I think I would have declined."

He's going on the trip partly because he's interested in travel, which he got a taste of while living abroad with his family.

"I really enjoyed living abroad because you learn so much more about other cultures and about yourself by getting outside of your comfort zone," he said.

Dalager starts his mission trip orientation on Aug. 19 and flies to Malaysia on Aug. 26.