College freshman Shemaiah Strickland suffered with horrible nightmares when she first came to Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Adjusting to being away from her home in Atlanta for the first time, she said she just wanted to belong. Strickland attended a university organization fair and met North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary Vickie Stewart, who was staffing a booth with fellow campus chaplains for The University Memorial Chapel.
Strickland had prayed to God for help with her loneliness. “I asked God what to do, and He sent me to Vickie,” she said.
Stewart gave Strickland her card and invited her to call whenever she wanted to talk. She made the call and Stewart later led her to Christ.
Though Strickland had attended church off and on, she said she never felt she had a personal relationship with Jesus. She started going to Stewart’s weekly on-campus Bible studies with other young women and said she was impressed right away with the teaching and was inspired with the seriousness of the students’ study of the Scriptures.
Strickland remembered telling herself, “‘I don’t need church. I could just read the Bible.’ That was my thing. But then I came here and Vickie brought me to Christ with her teachings.”
Reaching students such as Strickland is what Stewart is passionate about. Simply known as “Miss Vickie,” Stewart energetically moves around campus on mission “to connect,” as she puts it, with students whenever she can. “Not preaching, but connecting and building relationships” with them is the key to her ministry, she said.
“I might say, ‘Hello, my name is Miss Vickie. How can I pray for you?’ They’ll say, ‘Oh, really, you want to pray for me?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yes,’ and I tell students, ‘I am here to serve you. Here’s my number, if you need prayer or want to talk. I am available.’”
Stewart is one of more than 5,000 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (AAEO) for North American Missions. She is among the NAMB missionaries featured as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 6–13. With a theme of “Start Here,” the 2011 AAEO’s goal is $70 million, 100 percent of which benefits missionaries like Stewart.
In 2008, when Stewart came to Morgan State as NAMB’s campus missionary, she said God brought her back home to her native Baltimore and gave her the desires of her heart. Since she first felt called to missions in 1981, Stewart wanted to work with college students.
But first God led her to work with the urban poor in Brazil as a missionary with the International Mission Board. When she was commissioned in 2000, she was hired to work with students but ended up serving as a church planter while there. Stewart said she never intended to leave Brazil, but she returned home after her father passed away to help care for her mother.
Soon after coming home in 2007, Stewart applied for the campus ministry position, which is supported by NAMB and the Baptist State Convention of Maryland/Delaware.
Stewart was a natural to continue the work begun a year earlier at Morgan State by Ryan Palmer, pastor of Seventh Metro Church, Baltimore. Palmer said his church and others within the state convention had been praying for three years for direction and for someone like Stewart to come along. He said it was “a step back, wow moment” when they found her.
Together, Palmer and Stewart lead an off-campus, coed Bible study, called “The Point,” which targets unchurched students. Stewart also holds a weekly Bible study for young women on campus.
The young women in her weekly Bible study have many emotional needs, Stewart said. They are searching and figuring out what they want to do with their lives. She said she prayed for God to send her students, much like Strickland, who have teachable spirits and for those who are not Christians and who are hungry for the Word.
“We talk about what it means to love God and what it means to be a Christian,” Stewart said. “Christianity is a way of life. It’s a relationship, not a religion.” (NAMB)
Share with others: