Emily's Ministry Updates

As promised, here is your mid-month update! I have a few stories to share along with some big news.  Let’s hop to it.  This year’s welcome week was unlike any other year I’ve experienced, but that is true of many 2020 experiences. A typical kickoff for the new semester involves movie nights, carnival-like events and so much free food. Our student leaders and the whole staff would be on campus for every event to meet students. This can be exhausting, but incredibly worthwhile. This year there were no events to welcome students. The campus was eerily empty despite the fact students had moved in. Yet, we did what we could do: we went on campus and created our own events to meet students.  Our events were simple. We divided our leader team up and sent them out in small groups across our campus. The campus had guidelines that we followed like wearing a mask and staying in groups of no larger than ten people. These rules were simple enough to follow. Some of our lady leaders ho...

Let’s jump in. This month went in a different direction than I had expected. I have some neat stories to share about welcome week, but I was not on campus this year. I spent the end of August quarantined with covid-19. Forgive me for just now sharing this; thankfully, my case was mild with me being congested and having no taste. My testing positive led to one of the strangest two weeks I have experienced in a while. I had to struggle with several questions during my time away. All of them revolved around God’s timing and why I was sick.  For a campus pastor, everything we do in the summer ramps up for the new year. We fundraise and rest to be ready for this very season of meeting new students in August. A fact that has been drilled into my head is that our ministry is built on the work done at the beginning. So with having covid, I grieved not being on campus with my friends doing what I had been praying about all summer. Our team did an amazing job being wise and meeting new peopl...