March 26, 2012
For Immediate Release

 

By Christina L. Kern, office assistant

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky.— Cleaning out homes, playing softball with prisoners, teaching English as a second language and most of all planting seeds is what several groups of Campbellsville University students did over spring break.

Campbellsville University students planted seeds for Christ in mission trips to New Orleans, La.; Panama City, Fla.; New York City and Central Florida over spring break.

Tomohiro Suko, a senior from Japan, works on a home in New Orleans with Trent Creason, campus ministries intern. (Photo by Sarah Creason)

A group of football players ministered to prisoners in Central Florida through softball. Over the course of the trip to four prisons and correctional facilities, and a mission and ministry center, “Eighty four people accepted Christ and many others were exposed to the truth of the gospel,” Jim Hardy, assistant football coach who led the trip, said.

The mission trip was a first for Rodrick Dickerson, a senior of Memphis, Tenn. “The inmates we had come in contact with were definitely people, but the fact they were behind bars influences society to view them as outcasts… No sin is greater than another—the man who stole from a store became a thief, and is just as guilty as the man who stole a life and become a murderer. No one can measure a man's heart but the man who gave us life.”

Ed Pavy, director of campus ministries, also went on the trip. He said a 70-year-old man was “hostile toward Jesus Christ, but after one of the football players spent six to eight hours talking with the man, he accepted Christ.”

In New York City, four girls led English as a Second Language classes. Charity Powell, graduate assistant in campus ministries who led the trip, met a Thai woman in the classes who had only been in the U.S. for three months. “I've been to Thailand, so I was able to say a few things to her in her language, which brought an instant smile to her face,” Powell said.

After telling the story of Lazarus, Powell was able to convey the gospel to them. “In their eyes I could see that they were processing this new concept and taking it all in. I was overwhelmed by the idea that God was allowing me to be one of the first people to introduce them to the love of Jesus.”

Natalie Buckley, a senior from Louisville, Ky., helped a 9-year-old Bangladeshi with her homework and in the process was given the opportunity to share about the birth of Christ. “She was not converted to Christianity when I left, but I realized a seed has to be planted…It is not up to me to convince her that Jesus is God, only the Holy Spirit can do that,” Buckley said. She and the girl have since become pen pals.

The New Orleans' mission trip group worked on a termite damaged home, completed yard work and spent time helping out in Unity Homeless Shelter and Second Harvest Food Bank, Trent Creason, trip leader and a campus ministries graduate assistant, said. The team worked with Communitas mission group who “moves into neighborhoods with the intention of living daily life consistently and tangibly around those who are lost,” Creason said.

The team was able to take care of two weeks' worth of work on a house in one day for the ministry.

Maribeth Milburn, a junior from Lawrenceburg, Ky., said, “God really taught me the importance of building relationships and truly being Christ to people.”

As an education major, God used Milburn and another team member in observing a classroom. “That isn't the normal mission trip I think of, but that is what God needed us to do in order to impact [the teacher's] life,” Milburn said. “God taught me that our mission goes way beyond fixing a house, but it is a lifestyle of investing in people's lives and meeting their needs emotionally and physically so God can meet their needs spiritually.”

In Panama City, Fla., CU students worked with the Beach Reach ministry giving rides to vacationers who were unsafe to drive and serving a free pancake breakfast each morning. Through this ministry they were able to share Christ.

Campbellsville University is a widely acclaimed Kentucky-based Christian university with more than 3,500 students offering 63 undergraduate options, 17 master's degrees, five postgraduate areas and eight pre-professional programs. The website for complete information is campbellsville.edu.