Campus News

Go Con­fer­ence: Ser­vice Pro­ject

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MISHAWAKA—This past Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon a group of de­ter­mined stu­dents left Bethel’s cam­pus on a mis­sion – to serve our com­mu­nity. The group con­sisted of twelve stu­dents of a va­ri­ety of ages and ma­jors. The ser­vice pro­ject – in­spired by the GO Con­fer­ence in chapel this week – was held at St. Paul’s re­tire­ment home in South Bend. 

The stu­dents spent much of their af­ter­noon serv­ing the el­derly and help­ing the re­tire­ment home staff with odd jobs that needed to get done. These jobs con­sisted of help­ing to sort, or­ga­nize, and de­liver mail to res­i­dents; or­ga­niz­ing old CDs and putting them in their proper places; in­ter­view­ing res­i­dents about their fa­vorite ac­tiv­i­ties, life ac­com­plish­ments, and ask­ing per­sonal in­for­ma­tion so that the re­tire­ment home can best suit their needs. Fi­nally, the stu­dents just took the time to visit with the res­i­dents, hear about their lives, and talk about every­thing un­der the sun. 

There were some mis­takes – such as mixed up mail – but at the end of the day, these pro­vided a good laugh for stu­dents, staff and res­i­dents alike. The staff at St. Paul’s greatly ap­pre­ci­ated the lengths that the stu­dents were will­ing to go in or­der to help them bet­ter serve the res­i­dents, and they will al­ways love hav­ing Bethel stu­dents come in to vol­un­teer or just visit with res­i­dents. Al­to­gether, the GO Con­fer­ence Ser­vice Pro­ject was a suc­cess. It pro­vided a great way to get out and serve the com­mu­nity around us, and a great way to be wit­nesses for Christ.