Dozens of Samford University students gave up their cherished spring break respite from classes and exams in late March to participate in missions efforts in four states and the District of Columbia. While a group of 12 stayed in Alabama to do community ministry in Perry County, others traveled to Illinois, Louisiana, Virginia and the nation’s capital.
In East St. Louis, Ill., 15 Samford students undertook a variety of urban ministry efforts. Freshman Landon Eckhardt had one word to describe the experience: “unfathomable.”
“God’s love was poured so lavishly on the people of St. Louis through us,” reported Eckhardt, whose team worked in a Christian Activities Center (CAC), a battered women’s shelter, a food bank and a retirement community. At the CAC, they cleaned the facility and renovated part of it for use by an adult literacy program.
“Every day, we spent five hours building relationships with the kids who would come into the CAC,” said Eckhardt, explaining that the facility gives East St. Louis inner-city youngsters a place to play and receive tutoring.
The students put muscle into mopping floors and cleaning the kitchen at the women’s shelter and put heart into building relationships with the staff. At the St. Louis Area Foodbank, they formed an assembly line to prepare food boxes to be taken to the poor and elderly.
“We made over 600 boxes that fed over 4,500 people,” Eckhardt said. At Our World Retirement Community, they cleaned buses and made friends with the elderly.
All in all, he said, the week was a long and hard one. “However, God taught us how to truly love each other and the people we are in contact with every day.”
One night was particularly special for the Samford volunteers. “We had a time of candlelight and washed each other’s feet as a remembrance of why we were in St. Louis,” said Eckhardt, adding that they based the entire missions trip on the Scripture passage from John 13, in which Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. “God teaches that without love, salvation is impossible. What happened in St. Louis was indescribable as lives were forever changed.” (SU)
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