Some people in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Perry County, Ala., have one thing in common. They have been shown God’s love by students from Samford University in Birmingham. Ditto for women at a rescue mission in Nashville.
Many Samford students’ recent missions trips, sponsored by University Ministries, left an indelible imprint on those served and those who served.
Landon Eckhardt led an effort at the 11,000-member Brooklyn Tabernacle. The inner-city church sponsors a Downtown Learning Center at which adults receive free tutoring to help gain their GED and a Prayer Station street evangelism ministry.
"As we tutored, we spent time building relationships with these adults, ultimately sharing the love of Christ and praying with them," Eckhardt said, adding most of the GED students had left school because of drug addictions, pregnancies and gangs.
"Mixed in with us pouring out to people, we had many opportunities to be poured into," said Eckhardt, a sophomore finance major from Dallas, who has felt a call to ministry.
At the Prayer Station, the Samford team fanned out to parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan passing out tracts, asking for prayer needs and praying with people.
"It was common for the people to begin weeping during our prayers as conviction or hurt set in," said Eckhardt, who was an intern at the nondenominational church last summer.
The 11-member Samford team was accompanied by nursing professor Elaine Marshall and her husband, Larry. The team was visited by Samford President Andrew Westmoreland and his wife, Jeanna, who observed the group at work and took a tour of the tabernacle.
In Perry County, volunteers painted a community center, led day camps, worked at a local thrift store and cleaned an elementary school. All the while, they were nurturing relationships built in recent years as Samford has led economic and education initiatives in the area.
"Samford has been pretty intentional in reinvesting and maintaining involvement where our roots still lie," said University Ministries student President Lyndsay Cogdill, who makes monthly service and missions trips to Marion, where Samford was founded as Howard College in 1841.
"Every time I travel to Marion, the benefits and encouragement of the lasting relationships I’ve made there tug at my heart and remind me that the world is bigger than the one I often create for myself," Cogdill said. The junior psychology major from Lakeland, Fla., believes the increased participation by locals at Samford-planned seminars and activities is due to sustained friendships and the "verbal networking" that results.
Samford’s Word Players Christian drama group took its show on the road to Nashville, performing at a nursing home and in churches and serving at a women’s rescue mission. The Student Ministries Choir sang in Baptist churches and at a Christian elementary school in St. Louis. During the six-day trip, the 41 singers helped with projects at a subsidized housing area and the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home, where they also held a concert.
Twenty students worked with Words to Works Ministries in Jacksonville, Fla., where they served at an AIDS hospital, worked with a shelter for the homeless and tutored children.
The missions trips underscore University Ministries’ desire to encourage students to exercise and grow their faith through fellowship and service to others, said April Robinson, director of student ministries.
"The stories they tell upon their return inspire and invite others to seek and serve God wherever and whenever the opportunity arises," Robinson said. (SU)
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