My inner-city neighborhood is home to around 6,600 residents, nearly 25% of whom do not speak English as their primary language. Since English-language proficiency is a gateway to jobs and better education, some of my education major classmates and I decided to serve our neighbors through English tutoring. Each week, I coordinate nearly 70 university students, myself included, to teach English to area residents. We go to their apartment complexes for home tutoring or teach in a local community center. Volunteering to teach English is just part of it. The real reward comes from the formation of friendships that transcend cultural barriers. For months,… Read More
Unique Ministries
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I'll never forget the day in Guatemala when my missions team came across some children on the street. In an effort to build relationships with the kids, some of my teammates started chatting in their limited Spanish. I sat down with a boy who was a little separated from the group, and after exhausting the few Spanish phrases I knew, a teammate told him I was an art teacher. He jumped up, ran home and returned with a pack of crayons. We sat on the curb drawing animals, trucks, and whatever else he could think of. God showed me that art… Read More
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I thought I knew what it meant to follow Christ and to take up my cross. But, over the years, I have learned that God often gives us ministry opportunities that we've never asked for and certainly never wanted. When my heart was broken as a young single woman, God gave me a ministry I never wanted. He gave me a group of women with broken hearts to come alongside. Ministering to other single women was incredibly rewarding but also vulnerable and painful. Years later, God called me to a new ministry in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I never imagined spending… Read More
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I was having a hard time deciding what I was going to do with my life. I prayed that God would use me as His vessel. I didn't hear anything from Him for a while. But in 2015, I was driving my car and saw an elderly man really struggling to cut his grass. So I got out of my car and helped him finish the yard. When I was driving away, I was amazed at how good that felt. And I truly believed God was speaking to me. So as I was finishing up my computer science degree, I would find widows, veterans, disabled or elderly people that… Read More
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I was a shell of a human being. By the time I was 20 years old, my drinking progressed to the point where I was emotionally and spiritually isolated from everyone around me. I abandoned my childhood faith and thought if God was real, He wouldn't want anything to do with a person like me. But I was given a beautiful solution to my addiction when I joined a 12-step fellowship and was able to reconnect with God. Recovery has allowed me to regain my family's trust, maintain genuine friendships, graduate from college, have a healthy relationship with my boyfriend, keep… Read More
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I am a foreman of a construction crew. I really enjoy what I do for a living. I get to work with my hands, and with the help of my crew, create something that is needed. It's a lot of fun to see a bridge be built, a building rise out of nothing, or a road be fixed. At church, I do similar work for God. There always seems to be a need for something to be built. Whether it's a half pipe for the teenagers to skate on, the set of a musical for the children, more risers for the… Read More