My last semester at SUNY Fredonia
proved to be a time of growth. To start off the year, I went to Urbana; this is
a mission’s conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Urbana is where you can take
classes about evangelism or growing in your faith, hear testimonies from
missionaries, study the book of Luke, and have a chance to sign up for missions
trips. This is where all 16,000 participants did “A Join In” where we made 32,000
Caregiver Kits with World Vision. These kits go to people who help those with
AIDS in third world nations. Before we made the kits, they showed us videos of
people that use the kits or the people that they help. It was moving to see the
videos and the impact that the kits have. We could sense the power of the
experience ourselves when we made the kits later that night. Making the kits in
Urbana inspired me to want to bring the kit build back to Fredonia. After
mentioning this to Kathryn, who was joining as staff but not on campus yet, she encouraged me that I should
organize it back at Fredonia.
The time between Urbana and the
start of classes was when planning began. I never planned something like this
before so it was scary for me. The AIDS Caregiver Kit section of the World
Vision website was helpful in the organizing process; they had a series of
charts and other useful information to get you started. During this time was
the service trip; where Fredonia IVCF members go to back to Fredonia a week
early and volunteer at local service organizations. Since we were all staying
together at a church, we also shared meals and testimonies. Those that went to
Urbana spoke about its impact and encouraged others to help with the kit build
on campus. A few more people agreed to
help with the kit build.
Once classes started, there was a
lot of work to do. I tried to have weekly meetings with my group to plan and
delegate tasks. We tried several things to raise money; we had a spaghetti
dinner to involve the community, we worked with Residence Life to raise money
by saying we will pie the RA that gets the most money in their jar, and working
with the rest of campus by saying we will Pie the President if we raise a
certain amount of money. Some of the events were more successful than others;
this showed me the importance of putting up fliers early and spreading it by
word of mouth. Our school president was a good sport and had the idea to have
us to surprise pie her on campus. She definitely was surprised after her lunch
meeting and I think that those that were watching were too. You can watch the pieing here: Pie Dr. Horvath Finally, we had the kit build on
campus. Unfortunately, some of those that wanted to come were unable to;
however, there were about fourteen of us that made sixty kits. One of the
Fredonia InterVarsity chapter leaders also worked for the campus TV station and
made a news story about the event.
Overall, this experience taught me a
few things. First of all, it is OK to delegate tasks; people want to help and
do not mind if you offer things that they can help with. Second, I learned who
you ask when you want to hold events on campus etc. Third, I learned how
carefully I need to plan for things to make sure they are set up. Finally, I
learned that it is not as scary as I thought to plan things. I did not have to
know everything and I could ask others questions or for advice. Also, God was
faithful to make everything work out even though I was scared and
inexperienced.
Note: Danielle
graduated in 2013 with a Video Production major and is heading out as a World
Changer.
