I completely agree with some of you that it's hard if you haven't traveled to write about different places. My travel experience in US/Canada is limited to Washington, a smidge of Oregon, and Vancouver BC. I have had the luck to go to Spain once and France twice so I've used that to my advantage. But beyond that I have nothing.

One of the weird things that I think would help me write a mission story is of all things The Amazing Race. Does anybody else watch that show? I mean each season they travel all over the world and they have to navigate the different cities. Not that I would call myself an expert but based off what they show I think I could write about the congested streets of India or the humidity of Japan.

To me what is most important when reading mission stories is not necessarily that they have all of the physical locations down, but that they have the feeling of the area and they show a different way of life. This fandom has some amazingly smart people in it and I love when a story will incorporate information about say political instability in Africa or human rights violations. It's a weird thing to like I know, but to me it adds depth to stories.