Spring Break Trips Provide Unique Service Opportunities

Approximately 100 Belmont students, faculty and staff are spending their Spring Breaks next week on University-sponsored missions and service trips to sites across the U.S. and overseas. More than half of that number will be participating in Immersion 2013, a variety of Spring Break trips coordinated by University Ministries.

Spring Break 2011 Immersion trip to San Francisco

Director of Outreach Micah Weedman said, “University Ministries hopes to expose students, first, to the variety of injustices people of all backgrounds face in our country, and alongside that, the kind of work God is doing to combat that injustice in particular places.  This means that students have the opportunities to be immersed in local cultures and places, and to be immersed in the struggles and joys of particular peoples’ lives—hopefully, then, spending their Spring Breaks immersed in love, of God and neighbor.”

This year groups of students, faculty and staff will be traveling all over the country, exploring border issues in Las Cruces, examining creation in Cumberland Island, Ga., assisting with disaster aftermath in New Orleans and working in the inner cities of Chicago, New York and San Francisco, among other excursions. To follow blog entries from al of this semester’s immersion trips, click here.

In addition, the Inman College of Health Sciences & Nursing will be sending two teams of students overseas next week to practice their healthcare skills in areas of great need. Assistant Professor of Nursing Robin Cobb and another faculty member will be leading eight students to provide nursing care to the people of Grand Goave, Haiti. Also, a team of about 20 physical therapy and occupational therapy students and faculty will head for the seventh year to Guatemala for a Christian service project. Click here to read the blog entries from these two trips next week.

Finally, the Office of Residence Life is again offering a service trip over Spring Break as well, this time taking five students to family-owned Agata Mountain Organic Ranch (A.M.O.R.) in Tellico Plains, Tenn.,  to learn about organic and simple living.  Maddox Hall Resident Director and team co-leader Alex Snow said, “Students will have the opportunity to live in community with the family, eat and learn about self-sustainable/organic living, and go out into the community to help where needed.  Projects will range from helping at local farms, doing arts and crafts that will be sold to raise funds for a battered women’s shelter and helping develop the farm’s ability to support groups.”

Students Use Spring Break to Fulfill Service

Belmont students represented the University through service in March when they used their spring breaks to take mission trips across the country.

Mandy Newman (right) screens for diabetes during spring break.

For its annual spring break Immersion trips, University Ministries put eight groups with over 70 students directly into a variety of cultures that included El Paso, New Orleans, New York City and Appalachia. The program seeks to immerse students into the work God is already doing.

The Detroit trip’s student coordinator Diana Rogut said the trip was life changing for her and that serving the homeless population of Detroit was eye opening. Building relationships with the people the team was serving revealed the common misconceptions of homelessness across the nation and beyond that, the truths of the people who are suffering from it.

Rogut spoke about her newly formed relationship with a homeless man named Derrick, noting, “The best part of my trip was getting a Facebook notification… and it said, ‘thanks for the friendship and pray that God moves us in His will so never forget you have friends in the (313) Detroit… know that you’re at home when you’re in the D. Be blessed.’”

Residence Life also participated in a trip to Gulf Port, Miss., to serve a mission that works with poverty stricken families and the homeless population, specifically those suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Spending the week doing yard work, sorting donations, cleaning the mission and working in the office, the group was able to assist the mission in many ways.

“With the large volume of stories we hear daily about the problems with the world, it was a great sight to see our students interacting as part of a larger group that still believes in doing the right thing,” said group leader and Residence Director Chris DeLisle.

Belmont’s Pharmacy School as well as Occupational and Physical Therapy Schools took trips to the Guatemala City area in partnership with The Shalom Foundation to serve residents of the communities in many ways. The Pharmacy students provided screenings and general medical care to the residents while the OT/PT groups did assessments for disabled residents and home visits, among other things. Although the groups did not travel together, their service projects worked alongside each other and saw some of the same patients.

Pharmacy student and trip participant Mandy Newman said, “They taught me more about life than I could ever teach them about health. My life is forever changed because of them, and I hope to return next year.”

Alumnus Gives Homecoming Chapel Lecture

Belmont 2002 graduate Eric McLaughlin returned to campus for Belmont’s Homecoming Chapel Feb. 15 to discuss the work he, his family and others doctors are doing in Africa.

Committed to missions, McLaughlin and his family, along with several friends who are also physicians, moved to Kenya in 2009 to provide health care for residents and to teach young Kenyan doctors. The group is spending a year in the United States visiting friends and family before its members leave to spend 10 months in France. There they will learn French to prepare for a mission trip in Burundi, a country in Eastern Africa.

McLaughlin said his years in Kenya taught him he has limitations and God’s goodness is stronger than he realized.  When his human limitations come into play, God’s goodness has the power to overcome.

“Limitations are very real, but the goodness of God in the world is that much more real,” he said.

McLaughlin concluded his lecture by encouraging the students to reflect on their limits and remind themselves God is goodness and limitless.

He said, “Do not fear the darkness, but rather celebrate the light. And know that, by his goodness, God’s strength is made person in our weakness.”

Alumna Shares Stories from India Mission

Belmont alumna Megan Stephens (’09) returned to campus on Jan. 20 as part of the “Alumni on Mission” series in an event sponsored by the Belmont Ambassadors and the Office of Alumni Relations. Alumni on Mission is an ongoing speaker series featuring Belmont alumni who incorporate mission and ministry in their everyday lives.

Shortly after graduating from college, Stephens said she felt God called her to two things: missions and teaching.

“I felt like God wanted me to do missions, but I didn’t know when, where or how,” said Stephens, who studied middle school teaching.

Overcoming safety concerns from her family and the daunting task of raising $12,000, she moved to Siliguri, India in 2009 to home school the 17-year-old daughter of missionaries while looking for opportunities to do mission work herself. She has since become a Young Life representative, working with high school students in the small town, and an English teacher at a local seminary. Stephens continues homeschooling other children in exchange for her rent.

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Belmont Introduces Missionaries In Residence Program

Scott and Julie Bradford are serving as Missionaries in Residence at Belmont.

Belmont University recently welcomed new Missionaries in Residence Scott and Julie Bradford, coordinators of Baptist missionary work for an eight country region in West Africa. The Bradfords are working as missionaries in residence at Belmont for the fall semester before returning to their home in Burkina Faso, Africa with their three children.

With an office in University Ministries, they are connecting with students throughout the semester to answer their questions on how to get plugged into global missions.

In addition, the Bradfords are working with Belmont faculty and staff to increase involvement in missions to Africa. This past summer Belmont inaugurated a physical therapy trip to Ghana, one of the eight countries the family works with, to assist children in getting prosthetic limbs.

The Bradfords have come to Belmont to “connect with students, minister to their needs and help them along the way as they seek how and where they may serve God,” Julie said.

Vice President of Spiritual Development Todd Lake said, “We know that God is on mission to redeem the world, and Missionaries in Residence remind us that this is a worldwide task that calls all of us to find our place as part of the answer to the Lord’s prayer, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’”