Hey team!
Summer is in full swing now and I hope everyone enjoyed a great 4th of July. We had a lovely day of it. We had family over and watched the parade. I smoked my first successful brisket and I'm very proud about it (the key word here is “successful”). As we head towards the end of summer, here is a look back at May here in our campus ministry.
The biggest thing in May around here was graduation. We graduated Miss Brittany Begeman, Miss Cassie Carter, and Miss Taylor Escott, (pictures below). It was a day of big festivities, parties, balloons, hats, and cake. A whole pile of us went to the graduation ceremony and cheered. After that, Cassie and Brittany had a joint graduation party at our local Perkins and Taylor had a party at the rec center. One of our elders, Alan, Hardison, carried my two-year-old Patrick until he fell asleep, which was really sweet. Here are some pictures for you:
Cassie, Brittany, and Taylor
Alan Carrying Patrick
Graduation 2018
Brittany is moving to Minnesota to become a preschool teacher this Fall. Cassie is heading off to Indiana to pursue further education in Chemistry, so she can work in a lab somewhere and cure cancer for everyone. And Taylor is moving to Australia to go to a discipleship program and learn about coffee production. We are tremendously proud of our graduates and excited to see where their adventures take then next.
After graduation, we helped Brittany pack up her furniture and move and she helped us out with an interview about her faith journey during school. It started out as a simple video for a sermon I gave about our campus ministry, but she gave such a moving testimony that I have added it to our website, YouTube, Facebook, and now this newsletter. It is only a couple of minutes long, but Brittany's testimony sums up exactly why we do campus ministry and it is really encouraging. If you have some time, you should check it out at our home page of this website. Here she is drumming up the courage to share her story:
Brittany Sharing Her Story
In that same sermon about the campus ministry, Rachel also shared some of her story about what our campus ministry means to her. We recorded the whole thing, but unfortunately, the audio is too garbled to hear clearly, so I haven't uploaded that one to the website yet. Fortunately, Rachel said she could redo it for us, so whenever we get that one shot, I will let you know. There is power in the simple sharing of our faith stories.
“Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
- 1 John 4:15-16
After graduation, things calmed down around here immensely and we started getting into our summer schedule. Most of the students left, but we have half a dozen or so in town, so we are still meeting on Monday nights. It is a more informal event now though. We eat together and then either study the Bible, work on cleaning and repairing the Christian Student Center, or sometimes just play for the evening. One night we all went to surprise one of the high school students at our church, Ian Hastings, at his Senior High School Choir Concert. It was a lot of fun and Ian sang great. All that to say, our Monday night gathering are whatever we need them to be right now, which is nice.
Besides our Bible studies, there wasn't that much going on in May. Not only was school out and everyone leaving or settling into summer jobs, but I also got strep throat for two weeks. And let me tell you, strep throat is less fun than it sounds. It was gross. However, whenever I wasn't sick, we did have a great area preacher meeting, Rachel and Cassie patched a big hole in Rachel's car's muffler, and I spent a lot of time doing continuing education, so good things are still going on.
Anyway, that's all for May. Thanks for reading and you have a great day!
-Silas