Hey everybody!
I hope this Fall finds you happy and healthy. Around here we have had our fair share of colds already, but everyone is happy and upbeat about the school year. This month we have had loads of new and exciting events going on, so everyone is feeling pretty peppy about the semester.
Our September was all about making the important transition from the “Welcome to school” events to the “Finding our rhythm” events. We averaged two big group events every week. We had our standing Monday night Bible Studies, which gained a lot of steam, and then we participated in nearly every event the school would allow. We ran a badminton game for the “Swarm Days Luau,” we passed out snow cones in the Student Union at the school sponsored “Tiki Hut,” and we hosted a Cold Brew Coffee Bar at a Student Organization Booth Fair.
I was so proud of our students. They showed up to help in droves. We had more than half a dozen of our students come help at all three events. To put that in perspective, usually we only have one or two students at these kinds of events. Our team this year is super involved and it is really helping pull our group together.
Our Swarm Days Luau
Our Badminton Crew
The badminton game and the snow cones were both new events for us. The school always hosts a bunch of activities in the first couple of weeks of school to get people involved and this year we were able to help out with a couple of those. I don't think we picked up any new students interested in our organization off of these events, but we got our name out there in front of the student body in a couple of positive ways, so that's always a good thing.
The Student Organization Booth Fair is another matter. That's usually our biggest recruiting event of the year every year. The last couple of years I have been experimenting with using coffee as our “hook” to get people interested in our booth. This time I think we really hit our stride. We have had some interest in games and things, but the Cold Brew Coffee Bar was a big hit. People loved it. We had a steady flow of folks coming through our booth the whole time. We passed out 4 entire gallons of cold brew coffee. People said we were geniuses multiple times. At the end of the day, we only had nine signatures from interested students, but we all agreed it was probably our most popular booth.
Our Booth
Besides the students and events, we also had some basic upkeep kinds of things. Calvin Chapman and Cody Skogen from Faith came over and removed the crumbling chimney from our facilities here. We hosted our monthly area church leader eating meeting. We had our annual campus ministry board meeting. I don't know if I say it enough, but I deeply appreciate all the hard work that the area church folks pour into our ministry here.
The most exciting news from September, however, is definitely our new students. We picked up four new students in the last couple of months and they are all fantastic human beings. We have one guy named, Noah, and three girls, Hannah, Hailey, and Izzie. Noah is from Whitewood, SD, Hannah, is from Faith, SD, Hailey, is from Gillette, WY, and Izzie is from Rapid City, SD. They are participating in just about every Monday night Bible study and they continue to be a big encouragement to our group.
In fact, this Fall our average attendance at Monday night Bible study, Wednesday night assembly, and Sunday mornings assembly are all up. We have more students making it to church on Sunday than ever before and it is glorious! I love having students in our campus ministry and I love love new students and I love love love it when our students connect with our church body.
Our club Faculty Adviser is a lady named Dr. Emelia Flint. She is a Psychology professor and loves Jesus. I asked her the other day what was the most pressing spiritual need she sees in the lives of our student at BHSU. She thought about it a moment and said, “Fully half of our incoming Freshmen who report their medical history to the school are on anti-depression medication. And that's only the ones who report it. Our students don't know who they are, where they belong, or what they are doing here. The identity issues are huge. The secular world hasn't given them a robust sense of identity and they feel lost.” I asked her what we could do to help and she said they need a sense of identity. We are helping students discover who they are as sons and daughters of the most high God and it is good work.
“'And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,' says the Lord Almighty.”
- 2 Corinthians 6:18
You have a great day and thanks for reading!
-Silas