One of Mike’s new roles as an Area Director is to participate in the hiring process for new staff. It’s been a joy to read the applications and interview the candidates as a part of our Divisional Leadership Team. Mike has appreciated hearing each applicant’s story of how God met them and why they are feeling called to serve with InterVarsity. It’s given him life to hear about how these students have been transformed by InterVarsity. The Purdue area will be adding two staff that are graduating seniors: John to work with undergrad students and Taylor to work with Greek students. The Purdue Greek team is also getting another great veteran staff, Katie, who will be getting married to Ross our current Greek staff, in August. This will double the number of staff that Mike is supervising next year, from 3 to 6. He’s looking forward to the challenge and added responsibility. More than that Mike can’t wait to see how God will use the strengths that he’s given each of the staff on this team to help the gospel advance at Purdue. |
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Throughout the spring we have a lot of conferences that are geared toward particular pockets of the campus. Mike was able to be at 3 out of 4 that Purdue students attended. This year, Mike was mostly there to observe and coach Purdue staff that were teaching. Mike, Annie and Mikey also got to help transport students to a conference in Chicago, and enjoyed the conversation in the car there and back. Below are some stories and highlights from Purdue students and staff at each conference. VISION - Black Student CONFERENCE5 students and 4 volunteers from Purdue went to our Regional Black Student Conference - Vision. One of those volunteers was a local pastor from Lafayette that Mike has built a relationship with over the past few years. Pastor Foster faithfully served as one of the main speakers of the weekend, to help students understand how their identities as Christian, Black, and Student come together. One student said after the conference that the weekend had changed his life. He explained he was thinking about transferring from Purdue after academic and financial difficulties in his first semester. But at Vision, God reaffirmed to him that he was at the right school and that God had him at Purdue for a reason. He’s excited to help reach out to other students on campus with the good news of the Gospel. GREEK CONFERENCEA junior in Kappa Delta at Purdue made a decision to follow Jesus at Greek Conference. When I first met her in September I invited her to join us at Greek Conference. She said yeah right I don't think so! I only found out later that in the same month she had attempted suicide. Her chapter's ministry leaders continued to pursue her, she started to open up to these girls because they had a genuine interest in her. Eventually leading to her coming around to the bible study hosted in Kappa Delta. A week before the conference she finally broke down and signed up. Her whole life she had struggled with severe anxiety, self harm, depression and thoughts of suicide. At Greek conference she had an encounter with God that changed her life, the same weekend she celebrated being 3 months free from self harm she made a decision to follow Jesus and begin a life long journey with Him. ISM GETAWAYThe first ever International Student Getaway was in late February. The theme was crossing cultures with Jesus as we talked about how to follow Jesus as an international student living in America. We praised God in many different languages including Japanese, Polish, Spanish, French and Chinese. Some of the students were already following Jesus and received training on things such as sharing the gospel in honor and shame cultures or spiritual conversation training. Other students were just exploring Jesus and were able to learn that he offers “living water” to everyone, all cultures and nations, as we studied John 4. We brought 5 international students from Purdue and I’m excited to see them apply what they learned back on campus! |
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