Many colleges have an “alternative” spring break, where, instead of spending time traveling for fun, students can travel somewhere to serve people in need. Hillsdale students have decided that traveling somewhere exotic isn’t necessary to do ministry.
When freshman Victoria Fassett found out that Hillsdale doesn’t have a spring break option like this, she and other women in the Olds Residence Bible study decided that should change.
Head Resident Assistant of Olds, junior Shelly Peters talked with Fassett and freshman Kathryn Wong about starting a missions trip.
“We started with a lot of prayer; at first that was all it was,” Wong said. “We were really praying about where we should go. Shelly and I were kind of independently convicted that we should stay here. We just initiated with local pastors and got their input and support.”
One of these local pastors is the Rev. Keith Porter of Hillsdale Free Methodist Church, where the attendees of the missions trip will stay.
“I’m always amazed when we send teens elsewhere to places like West Virginia or Kentucky, when there’s such a need here,” Porter said. “There’s a lot of need in Hillsdale County and Hillsdale proper.”
Throughout the week, students will spend their days from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. serving the Hillsdale community and their evenings serving and encouraging each other.
“The week is really two-pronged in its intention,” Wong said. “The first is to really love the people of Hillsdale, and show them the love of Christ. The other is to really grow as a community and as the body of Christ.”
By the end of the week, students will have read through “Love Walked Among Us.” In the mornings, Wong said, the students will read the book, and in the evenings, pastors from local churches will speak on the topic of that chapter.
“There’s nothing glamorous about this,” Peters said. “It’s really about service.”
As the advisor of Intervarsity Hillsdale Christian Fellowship, Assistant Professor of Religion Donald Westblade agreed.
“It would be so deeply satisfying to participate in this,” Westblade said. “Indulge yourself in this, instead of the self-indulgence of a week on the beach. I’m not denying that a week on the beach would be satisfying, but I think that the pleasure you would get from that is a superficial pleasure compared to the real, humanly, deeply, resonating, satisfying joy of seeing needs met.”
Wong and Peters both noted that they would like to see the connection between the college and the community go far beyond the time spent serving during break. As they have worked with GOAL programs, they’ve tried to find out how to fill the void of missing student volunteers during the week.
“There’s as much understanding as one might expect between a kind of work-a-day culture and a study-all-day-long culture on the hill,” Westblade said. “But, anything like this, where we’re reaching out and saying ‘we’d like to be of service to the community,’ I think is going to help build those bridges and strengthen bridges that are already being built.”