Fall Break Trips Teach Lessons, Touch Lives

While most of the C-N campus was heading towards home and other popular fall break locations on Oct. 19, 44 students loaded up on vans with plans to "serve and help others." This year's Fall S.P.O.T.S. (Special Projects Other Than Summer) trips took people to two locations. The first was Pearlington, Mississippi, a small town mostly neglected in initial Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. The trip was made in collaboration with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (C.B.F.) and the locally run Pearlington Recovery Center which operates out of a converted elementary school that is no longer used to host classes. The group worked on construction, painting, yard work, and digging for plumbing for people who haven't gotten back on their feet since Katrina.

The second location was in the Western Heights area of Knoxville. The group there worked through the Western Heights Baptist Center, run by Tennessee Southern Baptists. C-N students helped the Baptist Center with several of its ministries including clothing and food distribution centers. Their main focus, however, was a Vacation Bible School program for local kids during three days of the trip. People at the Knoxville location also had the opportunity to work with a volunteer group sent by the Baptist Collegiate Ministries of the University of Tennessee.



From their lists of accomplishments it is quite certain that the S.P.O.T.S. groups were able to do some very practical things in order to help people. Eighth time returner Joanna Tillman mentioned "how much a difference one person can make." C-N students also found that they learned a great deal that had personal implications on their spiritual lives. People with long term involvement in student missions like Tillman and Ginny Bodine mention things they've learned through all these years that have changed their perspectives, ranging from community and passionate leadership to the needs outside our own back doors, respectively.

Four first time S.P.O.T.S. missionaries also brought very different perspectives on the experience.

Sophomore Rachel Burris spoke of the importance of her personal Christian walk in ministering to others. "In order to reach the lost" she says, "I must put Christ first and spend intimate time with Him in developing our relationship so that an overflow of Jesus will radiate from me as a witness of Christ." She recognized the difficulties in this statement on the Knoxville trip which she describes as both physically and spiritually draining. The physical aspect made her tired enough to neglect time with Christ during down time on the trip which she says she saw reflected in the spiritual energy she had to put into ministry the next day. She spoke of the need to learn this lesson before she can expect new direction from God.

Alex Lewis, a transfer this semester, had the opportunity to go Mississippi several times before through her church and was excited to see acquaintances she made on those previous trips. In visiting the hurricane damaged area, Alex was impressed by the way many had put their trust in God more than she often finds herself doing with much smaller concerns. "Often we let little things get our spirits down and we don't give them over to the Lord," she says. "The people down in Mississippi and New Orleans have continued to put their trust in the Lord even though their problems have been bigger than most of ours."

Alcoa resident Meredith Haynes found the Knoxville trip especially interesting since she was so close to home. Haynes had experienced other mission trips with her church but this was her first S.P.O.T.S. trip, as well as her first trip to a place near her home. She says, "It helped me realize a lot of times I take for granted the opportunities that God has given me to serve at home because I am always looking for ways to serve Him away."

In the relationships she made with people on the Mississippi trip, both fellow students and coordinators from the Pearlington Recovery Center, freshman Emily Saunders confirmed the statement her whole team agreed on that "service just brings everybody together." She reminisced about the trip the group took into New Orleans. Seeing some less than savory faces in the city made her "think of what Christ would do in this situation. "[We] saw so many kinds of people in different situations," she says. Her conclusion on Jesus' reaction is to think about "how Christ would talk to the people no one else would talk to and serve people no one else would serve." Saunders, like Burris, Lewis, and Haynes, expressed the desire to put what she learned on S.P.O.T.S. into practice in every day life, in how each of them deals with people, ministry opportunities that are neglected because they are nearby, problems in their own lives, and approaching ministry with a walk that is already close to Christ.