Hi everyone~
Your KB here.
I hope to take yet another group of wonderful UIUC and Parkland UCC Campus Ministry students to the New Orleans area next March for BreakAway 2017. Our plan is to work with the St. Bernards Parish Project which is an award winning nonprofit which mobilizes volunteers to work together to help families recover their homes after through catostropic storms (like Katrina and others). For BreakAway more than any other UCC Campus Ministry endeavor we count on our big brothers and sister alumni and our friends to help us get where we are trying to go with some resources to be able to help when we get there.
Simply can't do it on our own. This is true now more than ever.
The many of you who have journeyed on a BreakAway with me know first hand how intensely packed and how impactful those ten days are in the life of a young college student. Their heart is going to be stretched. Hard. Perhaps even to the point of breaking. To see such need. To take off the blinders. To meet face to face and see the tears... hear the heart wrenching stories... and to recieve the overwhelming love back from those we meet and work our best to give a hand to-- even if only for a couple days.
It matters.
It hits deep.
It changes things.
We have a record number of freshmen who are very active in the campus ministry this year. I think of Jane from China and Andrew from near Boston and Sam from LA and others. You will be proud I know to learn that the largest and most popular program this year is "SMAD"- Students Making A Difference.
Every week since August a full circle of students have met with me to not only discern how students might use their compassion to help those who have been marginalized in Champaign- Urbana but to then put that into action. By the end of the semester 20 campus ministry volunteers cooked, served and shared a full hot meal with a room full of neighbors who are homeless in the Fellowship Hall of CUCC-- a first in the history of the church. Since the Times Center and Salvation Army Emergency Shelters are no longer in service, our students are helping staff and provide meals for a make shift cold weather shelter that moves between churches on freezing nights.
We have been fundraising.. yes. Selling hot chocolate and cookies on the Quad. But it was to be able to buy groceries to feed those who would have no other hot meal and not for BreakAway as it might have been in the past. Our BreakAway fundraising has had to take a back burner as never before because of the urgency of the need the permanent shelter shutdowns have created and SMADs determination to provide at least some local help.
We have been working together to help as we can locally but BreakAway is a whole other kettle of fish in terms of fun and challenge... potential learning and growth... being a community together and trying together to hold out our hands and our hearts, if only for a little while- to beloved new friends in deep need and struggle. Friends we meet who give us so much more back then what we give.
Each of you who have journeyed on BreakAway in the past is such a part of what keeps inspiring me to believe that the compassion of college students really really matters. For them. For those they meet. For the world. For the rest of their lives.
Will you help me out-- all of us on BreakAway 2017 out? We have a potential trip as of this writing of 11 students and myself. Funds are very needed. To help us get there- and then to help us help those we meet. And every thing in between.
Maybe I shouldn't but I take every gift from our alumni very personally. Like it is a Huge huge hug of love and support directly. Each gift IS huge. And each one will help us get where we long to go.
Thank you so very much guys~~~~~
I mean that with all my heart.
Your KB
