The last couple weeks have been especially full. It’s the halfway point of the semester and we feel the academic demands of that.
And we do lots of things at Wesley. But I love how in focus our mission has been this semester. I have been especially grateful for the ways so many of our students have set aside time to serve others, to discover what God’s kingdom work looks like in other places, to be learners of Jesus’ disruptive and grace-filled way of combating racism.
I wanted to share a few pictures from the last couple weeks and a brief description of what our students were up to in each picture.
This group, along with a couple others, got up before the sun, to be at Wesley by 5 am in order to make breakfast for the Gideons in our area. They served with smiles on their faces! This is a mission fundraiser for us. It will help to send a team of our students to serve in Ecuador with United Methodist missionaries there, later in May 2023.
This group - made up of our student council and several other student leaders - met with the leadership of Celeste Eubanks for part 1 of 2 we’re calling “Becoming Christian Leaders: Meaningful Conversations about Race”. Celeste helped us to explore the stories that so powerfully shape our view or reality around race and socialize us to speak and act in certain ways. Being able to start to tell our stories is a first step in beginning to notice where these stories continue to be bent toward supporting and sustaining social norms that are racist at their root - norms of division, separation and inequity. We’ll meet again on November 14 for part 2 of this conversation.
This group spent the first part of their Fall Break in Montgomery learning about the work of the Beacon Center from Rev. Richard Williams and getting to serve helping to feed some 300 households and getting to paint rooms that will be a part of how this amazing and holistic ministry will soon expand to find even more ways to embody the good news of Jesus in its neighborhood.
This group used their Monday evening to serve some 60 families at our monthly Loachapoka UMC food pantry - setting this room up like a grocery store and shopping with those who come for food. It’s been just the last 3 months that we’ve gone back to shopping after 2 YEARS of doing a drive thru pantry because of the pandemic. It has been a lot of extra work and some trial and error. But I am so proud of the desire of these students to serve others and to do that with joy and humility!
So, how’s that for couple weeks worth of being a part of God’s mission in many different places?!
