Mennonite youth continue to help spread Bethel College’s emphasis on service from its booth at the Mennonite Youth Convention in Pittsburgh, well over a year later.
At the convention, Bethel sponsored a Mennonite trivia scavenger hunt in which youth filled out cards with answers and then entered them in daily drawings. The four winners each got $500 for a charity or service project of their choice.
Sept. 16, Bethel Associate Director of Admissions Clark Oswald ’03 visited First Mennonite Church in Morton, Ill., to participate in Sunday morning worship and present a check for $500 to Mark Nabers, a high school senior from the congregation.
Nabers chose to give his check to the Prenatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill. He told me, ‘This is where I started my life – I thought the money should go there,’
Oswald said.
Oswald presented the first check last fall to Karli Mast, a student at Western Mennonite School in Salem, Ore., and a member of Zion Mennonite Church, Hubbard, Ore.
Mast chose to donate the money to Drift Creek Camp, a Mennonite camp in Oregon’s Coast Range mountains. I have been going to summer camp there since I was in first grade,
Mast said, and now I am a senior in high school and I have not missed a year.
She plans to counsel at the camp next summer.
I have been so blessed to be able to go there and that place has impacted my life so much,
she continued. I wanted to be able to give back – hopefully, the donation can help with making the same impact Drift Creek made in my life in the lives of others.