Early Departure...

Hello, friends!

This is my seventh year here at Mizzou and I would say that even though I came from a very different context (moving from a small private, liberal arts school to a large state school) I've done my best to embrace the culture here and am pretty used to how things run.

However, there is still one thing that I haven't gotten used to about life in Columbia: Students graduating early.  At WashU, it was very rare that you had students graduating early.  Not only with the heavy class load but the fact that many folk were hyper-competitive pre-med students, there were course re-takes and such that ensured students were hanging around for a full 4 years. 

Not so much at Mizzou though.  It's much more common for students to graduate a semester, or even a year early.  This semester, we're losing 3 of our student leaders to early graduation.  Each of them was a huge contributor to ACF during their time here and we are sad to see them go but excited for the next stage of their lives.  Here's a bit on each of them.

Sarah Liz is one of those students you just can't help but love.  She is always so happy, willing to serve, and willing to take risks.  She has led an international student small group for us as well as reviving the women's small group this year.  One of the things that I have always appreciated about Sarah Liz is that she is not afraid to go where God is leading her.  She has built up great friendships with Indian students in her apartment complex and that has led to inroads into that community that we would not have had otherwise.  We are definitely going to miss her. 

I'll never forget one of my first conversations with Rachael.  We were hanging out and I wanted to get a sense of how missional our new freshman was, so I asked her a simple question: Who do you want to see come to Jesus?  I don't know if there was even a breath between when I finished the question and Rachael's answer of "my sister."  At that point I knew we had a missional student.  Since then, Rachael has shown how much of a servant's heart God has given her.  She does a great job of being thoughtful in her care for students and has definitely grown in her leadership as she's taken lead of the worship team.  No doubt, we are going to miss Rachael. 

April is Rachael's sister but she's also much more than that.  When April gave her life to Jesus (much to Rachael's delight!) it began a journey for her that has been really amazing.  April has never wavered in her love for her sorority sisters.  It was when she started following Jesus that she saw her sisters as a mission field.  Since that time, she's been working tirelessly to share the Gospel with the ladies of APhiG and we've begun to see some real openness.  It's been really fun to see April grow over this time and absolutely we are going to miss April.  Thankfully, she said she's still going to be hanging around Columbia for one more semester so we're pretty excited about that.  =0). 

Friends, there you have it.  3 more ACF leaders are riding off into the sunset.  Our hope is that ACF has blessed them half as much as they have blessed the fellowship.  Please pray for them, that wherever God leads them next, they will hear his voice and look to advance His kingdom. 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam