New Campus, New Students, New Opportunities
In August, our entire family tested positive for COVID-19. The kids recovered in just two days, Holly took a full two weeks, and Matt, getting pneumonia, took a good month. We recovered just in time for the kids to start 1st and 2nd grade and for Holly to begin a new semester of seminary and starting a new ministry on a new campus, Huntington University Arizona.
Huntington University is one of the top universities for media arts with many awards in film, graphic design, and animation. Though the school is a “Christian” school, over 50% of the students do not identify as Christians but attend due to the prestige of the school in the field of media arts. The university called Holly over the summer and asked if she would come and be a presence on campus.
With the entire support and promotion of the faculty and staff, Holly has been even given an office to meet with students. She will be training students that are believers in evangelism and discipleship, while also meeting with students who want to know how to have a personal relationship with God. At first, Holly thought she’d be working alone, but she met a young man, Lonnie, who just came back from serving overseas with Cru and is excited to jump in and serve with her on the campus. There are also two faculty, RuthAnn (who served with Wycliff for 45 years), and Jim, who is one of the theology professors on campus, who will be joining Holly and Lonnie to minister to the students on campus.
This week was our first week to meet the students and we gave away over 100 Christian books so that we could meet them and have them fill out a spiritual interest survey. This month is critical. Please pray that we get to follow up with spiritually interested students and that we find students who want to learn how to be spiritual influencers on their campus. We are heading to our Fall Get-away Retreat in mid-October and are praying students will come and invite their non-believing friends too.
PERSONAL UPDATE
September is Matt’s birthday month and we had fun celebrating him! He got basketball cards and was in heaven! Please pray for Holly as she balances three seminary classes and campus ministry. Pray for Matt as he continues to create websites and ministry videos to further train our staff and students.
