Pictures from the past few months

 

 

Starting from the top…the first 11 pictures are from the trip to Chicago that I took students on for Spring Break! We had a blast! The city was beautiful (and extraordinarily warm!), and we enjoyed seeing the buildings and seeing the river dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day! We loved working with Sunshine Gospel Ministries and doing our work projects during the day. We all learned a lot as we got a taste of how God works in the inner city.

The next picture is of the house that I will be living in next year! God has graciously provided a house for me and two other girls who will be interning at our church, Clemson Presbyterian. The house is actually owned by the church and sits on the property. I am thankful that I have a convenient and fun place to live.

The next picture is of me and two of my good intern friends! I got to go to Auburn for my favorite music festival (280 Boogie!) and these girls came too!

The last two photos are taken from our RUF Valentine’s Day dinner event! The guys made dinner for all the girls and served us. Everyone dressed up nicely and had a great time afterwards playing games and dancing.

So although these aren’t in chronological order and there aren’t many photos I hope that these give you a glimpse of the past semester!

End of the Semester!

The semester is starting to come to an end here in Clemson. Students are starting to hole up in their dorms and in the library in preparation for finals week (the first week of May). I have been reflecting a little in the past 8 months, and overall I am still excited and encouraged that God has placed me in Clemson. I am starting to see some “fruit” in the lives of some of the students I am meeting with, and it is neat to see how God is working in their lives. I am getting to help students struggling with anxiety, stress, doubt, and I getting to answer some of their general question about the Christian life and the Bible. In many ways I feel like I am just now getting into the groove of the semester- knowing what to expect now and knowing how best to do ministry in this particular environment. Girls are more honest with me now and I feel like we are just beginning to enter into important conversations. But there’re only 2.5 weeks before summer! I am glad that I will be here for a second year to continue these relationships.

Last Friday, RUF had a bonfire on the lake. It went well and some students came to it that have not come around to many events other than our weekly Large Group. I hope that they are feeling more comfortable now and welcome to the group. We have two more Large Group meetings, one of them being tonight. Stephen will be wrapping up our year-long study of Hebrews and faith. We will look at Dating and Marriage in the fall.

We will have our end of the year party this coming Friday at the Speaks’s house! We will cook out and hang out at the house, playing corn hole and other outdoor games.

May 7-12 I will be taking 20 students to Panama City Beach for our Summer Conference!! Summer Conference is the best. There is so much great teaching from the Campus Ministers and plenty of time for hanging out on the beach and fellowshipping with other schools.

This summer I will be heading up a summer RUF group here! My CM Stephen will be out of the country all summer so I’ll be the contact person for all RUF related events. I hope that the summer, with its slower pace and fewer number of students will provide an excellent opportunity for really getting to know the few students from RUF who will be over the summer. Also, this summer will be a time of raising support again! I will go back to the drawing board to raise yet another $32,495 for next year! I will be in Birmingham some this summer to handle support raising from there. Having said that, I would love to meet with you in person and tell you more about this past year- too many things happen to write on the blog and talking in person is much easier!

If you would like to support me financially  (or to continue to support me) I would greatly appreciate that. You can contribute online via the RUF webpage, ruf.org, or you can directly mail cash or checks to RUF at 1700 North Brown Road, Suite 104, Lawrenceville, GA. Checks can be made out to Reformed University Ministries, and put my name in the memo line!

I really would love to meet with you. I love to talk about RUF and my students, so please do not hesitate to call me (205.540.4046) or email me (april.smitherman@ruf.org) to set up a time. I really hope some of you take me up on this!

Thank you for reading! I will continue to post over the summer so keep on reading!

Spring Break in Chicago!

Twelve students  and I just got back from an amazing trip to the south side of Chicago.

This might have been the most important missions trip of my life. The ministry we partnered with, Sunshine Gospel Ministries, did a phenomenal job of not only providing my students and I with several neighborhood projects to physically work on but also of teaching us about inner city ministry and casting a vision for what ministry and, consequently, real life in an impoverished and underprivileged community looks like. I have always been interested in the city and have wanted to move to a big city for the past 5 or 6 years now. This trip to Chicago with Sunshine has really moved me to consider how my future might involve moving into a neighborhood like the one we worked in in Chicago. Regardless of whether moving into this type of environment is for me or not, the staff at Sunshine has challenged me and my students to see all of our resources as gifts to be used in service of others. If we have extra rooms in our houses one day, or even a couch, should we not be using that to serve others? If we have been blessed with a kitchen table how can we use that to include others and outsiders into our lives? Incarnational ministry was the theme of the week. God could have saved humanity in one day if he wanted- sending Jesus down for a few hours to die on the cross and to pay for our sins, but he didn’t. Why? Why did God require the Jesus live amidst a decrepit and dull people day after day for 33 years? He did so to model what life in an sin-ridden and dull environment would look like. He did so to show us how important it is for us to leave our comfortable environments where we have power, control, and acceptance and to move into an entirely uncomfortable place. We also talked about how we are to look for evidences of God’s glory in all environments and in all people groups. Yes, the inner city can be unglamorous, especially to those of us who are used to the privilege of our own middle to upper class affluence and ease, but the inner city is also full of God’s mercy and grace. It has a unique flavor of life to it. People talk differently, eat differently, value different things, and have different forms of art and entertainment, but these differences are good and as equally redemptive as what we have in Clemson. Sometimes it is easy to think what we are used to is good and right, and that anything different or uncomfortable must be wrong, at least partially, but this is not true. God made diversity, and he called it good. We need outsiders, strangers, and foreigners in our lives to bring in these “other” aspects of God’s good creation into our lives. He is only accurately reflected when all aspects of is creative and good nature are seen. How are you and I welcoming what is different into our lives?

“What exactly did you do?” you ask.

During the day we worked on a variety of projects, all 100 of us having chosen our favorite of the options, which were to volunteer in one of three schools, do yard work for an elderly woman, help a pastor tear down a motel, help another pastor  build a church, and do various other building/construction projects. If you are wondering what I mean by “help a pastor tear down a motel” let me explain. You may or may not have heard about Pastor Corey Brooks and his 95 day camp out on top of a motel notorious for being the center of much violence, prostitution, and drugs, which sat across from his church on the south side of Chicago. Pastor Brooks’s goal was to raise $450,000 and to use that money to buy then tear down the motel. You can read about the story here: http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/metro/pastor-corey-brooks-tyler-perry-roof-campout-donation-project-hood-new-beginnings-church-20120224. Our group was the first to come into the hotel and knock it down. “Take out all your aggression at the evil that happened here,” Pastor Brooks said. So we took hammers and knocked down walls, dragged out old bedding, and other random objects from inside the motel. It was great to be able to tangibly destroy a hallmark of sin in the city and to immediately see results.

For the other days I worked at a local elementary school, helping learning disabled kids learn to read and write. It was hard work and I definitely left with more respect for teachers in those environments. I did not particularly love the work, but I did love the kids. They called me, “Miss Sunshine,” probably something to do with the fact that I told them I was working with Sunshine. I didn’t bother correcting them; “April” is pretty close to “Sunshine” anyway.

We also had an opportunity to share food with the homeless one day. We each packed a lunch for ourselves and one for a stranger, and then we went downtown to find people to talk with and to share our food with. I went with a guy named Jessie, and we found a man named Bobby. Bobby had been in the army, and other than that had lived in Chicago his whole life. We talked for awhile about what Bobby liked and didn’t like about the city. Bobby told me he liked to fish. I do too so we talked about that for a while. Then Bobby had to go so Jessie and I found another man to talk to. His name was Earl. Earl had been to college for a semester years ago but had left school because he missed his family and because school was difficult for him. He told Jessie and I about his past, and finally we had to tell him we had to go, that our group wsa meeting to leave in 5 minutes and that we couldn’t get left behind. Earl asked if we might be able to come back and talk to him again another time. He said that he hadn’t talked to anyone about his life in a long time and that people didn’t usually ask or listen. Sadly, we told him we were just visiting the city. Earl said that that was okay and that our conversation would stick with him for a long time. It would be a beautiful memory that he would think about for a while to come, he said. Jessie and I had spent 10 minutes with Earl.

Overall the trip made a huge impact on our group, giving us important first-hand experience with ministry and the city. We learned a lot and now have to apply it to Clemson. Please pray that we would not fail to do so.

Also, I’d like to shamelessly plug Sunshine Gospel Ministries! They were fantastic to work with- helpful, organized, and passionate! They take church groups, families, or really anybody for a week at a time during the summer and spring to come and help out while getting a vision for what God is doing in Chicago. Sunshinegospel.org.

Winter Conference, Restore Conference, and Ravi Zacharias Tour

Spring is the season for conferences, apparently, in Clemson.

Over the weekend of February 10-12th, we took about 30 students with us to RUF Winter Conference at Ridge Haven Retreat Center in North Carolina!

The weekend was filled with all sort of activities such as hiking, tug-of-war, rock wall climbing, dance-partying (outside in 19 degree weather!), and field events. We also had 4 great sessions of teaching by the RUF campus minister at Western Carolina, David Osborne. He spoke on 4 different passages of Scripture and how they reflect who Jesus is and his love for us. He used the passage of Jesus turning water into wine to talk about how even at the beginning of his ministry, at a celebratory party, Jesus was already thinking about his death on the cross for us, when “his hour” would finally arrive. David used the passage of Jesus healing the demon-possessed, wild man to show us that Jesus can handle all of our problems and that he does so without flinching. Jesus’s sermon on the vine and the branches was the text David used to teach us the importance of staying connected to Christ in order to see any change and growth in our lives. Finally, David used Psalm 73 to talk about how God is in control in the midst of our pain and suffering. His teaching was excellent.

Several “fringe” students came on the trip, and it was neat to see them bond together and and make friends with the group at large.

My church, Clemson Presbyterian, and Crosspoint Church held a conference February 24-26 called “Restore.” It was aimed at teaching extensively on the topics of faith and apologetics. Ligon Dunkin and Bruce Ashford were the main speakers, with several of the pastors from Clemson Pres and Crosspoint leading “break-out” sessions between larger meetings. I went to the break-out sessions called “The New Atheist,” “Is Evolution Compatible with the Bible?,” and “Art and Christianity.” My professor friend, who is an atheist, came to the conference with my roommate. He was interested to see how attacked the American Christian feels by the scientific/non-Christian world. He said he did not realize that the culture was so polarized in America: Christians versus Science. He said that in Europe the two are much more easily meshed. He even expressed fear at this polarization. He was, however, pleased to see how the focus on the conference was on urging Christians to engage the non-believing culture in a conversation about faith, rather than to be “at war” with the world. The conference gave me a lot to think about. I suggest going to Crosspoint’s website to hear more if you are interested: http://www.crosspointclemson.org/. The Restore Conference podcasts are on the right of the page.

Yet again, another conference will be held in Clemson this Thursday: Ravi Zacharias is coming to Clemson on his college campus tour called, “Coexist? The Question of (In)Tolerance.” It will, without a doubt, be significant. There is a huge amount of hype around campus and the city right now. About 9,000 people are coming and the numbers are growing every day. The basketball coliseum, Little John, has 8,200 seats opened and overflow space has already been reserved at Clemson Pres and in a building on campus. I am bringing a couple of students, both of whom I am assuming are not Christians. Please pray for this event, that the Gospel would be clearly proclaimed and that hearts would be moved, eyes opened, and the Good News received! YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO THE EVENT ONLINE! Again, go to Crosspoint’s website to find the live streaming. More on this to come.

Having said all that, we need prayer. There is nothing more dangerous than having lots and lots of valuable, Biblical teaching rained down upon someone in the form of different conferences that the person does not internalize, take to heart, and apply on a daily basis. Layer upon layer of teaching can easily turn to callousness on the heart. Jesus himself spoke in parable and riddles to keep from heaping more and more condemnation upon the heads of those who did not believe or understand him. Please pray that the students here who have “heard it all before” actually hear it this time and that it changes their lives. Pray, too, that those who have never heard the Gospel before come to Co-exist and meet the Jesus of the Bible.

Chicago Trip over Spring Break

Hello, readers!

I am taking a group of students to Chicago over Spring Break! The group will probably be 10 to 15 students plus myself. I am very excited and also feeling very inadequate for such an endeavor. I have not been to Chicago before. I have not planned a trip before. I have not led a trip before. Nevertheless, the door opened for us to go, and I thought this would be a great thing for Clemson’s RUF. I don’t think Clemson has taken a missions trip in recent years, and the vision and energy and group bonding that comes from trips like these is an important component of what RUF is about. We believe in missions and evangelism, a Biblical world and life view, growth and grace, and fellowship and service. I cannot think of a better way to revitalize and replentish all of these ideas in our RUF.

We will be working with Sunshine Gospel Ministries (sunshinegospel.org), an inner city missions group. I do not know much about them except that they seem very organized, helpful, and passionate about their work. Sounds good to me.

The plan is to leave Clemson early (as in 6 am) on Saturday, the 17th of March, and drive the 12-14 hour stretch all in one day. Ambitious?  Very. Impossible? Maybe. Presumptuous? Yes.

We will hopefully recover that night and spend the majority of the next day touring the city and eating loads of pizza.

Sunday at 5 pm we will being to work with Sunshine. Every person on the trip selects a project from a list to work on for the week. Projects vary from painting in schools, to working with elderly people, to community gardens, to construction projects.

Every day we will go out and work and then come back to headquarters for a Bible lesson taught by an elder from a local PCA church. He (Joel) will discuss what they Bible says about issues like race, poverty, homelessness, the city, and the hungry. He will use Scripture to address these areas, and talk about what being “called to the city” really means. It will be excellent; I can tell.

At night we will ride public transit into the city to visit other missions organizations, getting a glimpse of how God is a work already in Chicago. We will also take food to the homeless and actually sit besides them and eat together. I cannot wait to hear what they have to say.

We will leave early Saturday, the 24th of March, to return to Clemson.

I will certainly have much to post about after the trip. Stay tuned.

Please pray for the trip. My main concerns presently are 1. that my students can get the money (about $500) to go and that they would commit and 2. safety driving up there and back.

I have goofed on the cost, underestimating what I thought it would be. Please pray that my students would not be frustrated, that they will still be excited to go even with the cost change, and that they would commit to coming!

Please pray that we would not break down, get hurt, or be late getting to Chicago. I hope this is the most uneventful and boring ride of my life.

Please pray that the students who go would catch a glimpse of the bigger picture of God’s kingdom. I want them to be changed by this trip. I want them to care about other people. I want them to care about the poor and the hungry. I want them to bring this back to Clemson, and remember it- not in a cheesy, mountain-top kind of way- but in a quiet and faithful way. Please pray for all of this.

 

P.S. We are going on our Winter Conference this weekend! We will be at Ridge Haven retreat center in North Carolina from Friday to Sunday. I will post on this next week! Pray that people would feel welcome and  included, that friendships would be formed, and the Gospel would be understood. Thanks!

an unexpected person

I have made friends with a world-famous physicist here at Clemson. Actually, all the credit goes to my roommate, who is an even more avid Starbucks-goer than I am and who struck up a friendship with this man, who she sees regularly while they both sip on their lattes under the spell of caffeine-addiction like moths to a green, fluorescent flame.

The physicist’s field is quantum theory, and I have no idea what that means, so that is all I will say about that.

To say that he is smart is a preposterous understatement, but what I find more impressive than all his merits and badges from the world of Academia is his genuine interest in others and his never-satisfied curiosity about everything. He seems to find as much to discuss on the subject of making cookies as he does on relative theory. I never knew how un-curios I was until I met him.

I had seen him in Starbucks before, and after my roommate described this newfound friend of hers to me I knew we had seen the same man. One afternoon after church I was sitting on my couch in my pajamas eating my lunch and heard the door open. In walked Leigh followed by the physicist. It was not my finest moment. Wether it was because I knew he was brilliant, or because I knew he was an atheist, or because he has a British accent I am not sure, but for some reason I was intimidated and winced at the thought of telling him about my line of work: “Um, no, Mr. Physicist, sir. I am not a grad student. I do not actually know what Einstein figured out. I do not go to work at an office for 8 hours a day, and actually, I don’t even have an office. What do I do? Well, I bake cookies and sometimes talk about Jesus.”

I was preparing myself for this conversation (which really did go something like that), but I was not prepared for his graciousness and fascination. He really thought it was novel that I am in Clemson to make relationships. His exposure to religion seems to have been a sterile one, one that did not see how Christ was the Great Friend, the Brother, the Bearer of Burdens.

I always have good conversations with him. Actually, they are pretty one-sided, with him providing all the sagacity, but they are the kind of conversations that leave me feeling like we really talked about something, something beyond the rote and beaten-down conversations to which we become numb. I like him because he thinks. He values thinking, and he makes time for it. It’s cool to him, and he cares little that thinking is largely “uncool” in our society, especially (and ironically) in our university bubble.

Today I sat across from him at lunch for an hour and didn’t way a word. I just listened as he and the pastor of my church here talked about the effect the subjective and relative thinking has upon our society- every facet of it. Interestingly, both the physicist and the pastor had the same view on relativistic thinking: It’s absurd. They came from different angles and had different reasons, but the same conclusion. It was good to listen to them.

I didn’t think that I’d have this kind of friend here in Clemson. I didn’t think that this situation and opportunity would be laid in front of me. I really hope that the physicist knows Jesus one day. I hope that he comes to believe the Bible. Until then I am so happy to know him, to be friends with him, to learn from him how “to think” and how to be interested in others, and to discuss ideas with him. He is one of the most enjoyable people I’ve met since being here. Pray for him. Pray that the community of the church, that he is so intrigued by, would point him to Christ.

 

Coffee and Dessert

Thanks to everyone who came to the Coffee and Dessert event at my house last Thursday! It was an honor to have people come to hear about RUF and to support me. It was a great way to end my Christmas break and head back to Clemson. (I will leave on the 10th.) I am appreciative of all the prayers and financial gifts I have received over the last several months. Here is a copy of the handout that I gave to people at the event if you couldn’t make it.

RUF @ CLEMSON

April Smitherman

205.540.4046

april.smitherman@ruf.org

Thank you so much for coming over to hear about Reformed University Fellowship and my ministry in Clemson! I appreciate your interest and support immensely. Please do not hesitate to contact me to hear updates about my work at Clemson or to ask questions about what I am doing there.

 My blog, April Goes to Clemson, found at aprilatclemsonruf.wordpress.com, might be a good way to stay updated between receiving my newsletters. Check it out!

How you can be involved:

1.    Prayer

• Housing/roommate for me next year
• Spring break mission trip to Chicago (March 19-23)
• Winter conference (February 10-12)
• My Galatians Bible study this spring
• Freshman unity and commitment to RUF
• That RUF would be welcoming to outsiders
• Wisdom in conversations with students
• That “fringe” students from the fall would get plugged in
• My relationship with my campus minister, Stephen Speaks (communication, planning, etc.)
• Stephen and his wife Rebekah and their 3 kids- rest, their trip to Spain with Mission to the World over the summer
• That Stephen would clearly and wisely preach the Gospel

2.    Giving

• One-time Gifts
• Pledges

How to Give:

Checks– mail to  Reformed University Ministries

        1700 North Brown Road, Ste 104

        Lawrenceville, GA 30043

*Make sure to indicate that your check is for me.

Online Donations– www.ruf.org

* This is only for one-time donations using credit cards.

* I am now starting to raise new support for the 2012-2013 school year, as I have committed to another year with RUF at Clemson. I will need to raise another $32,500 in order to be fully funded. Please consider supporting me for next year. I hope to be in touch with you this Spring to talk more about this opportunity.

New Years with the interns

I just got back today from a wonderful weekend in Nashville with about 12 other interns to celebrate New Years and to hang out! The only times we get to see each other is at training or conferences so it was great to be able to see them this time without having to fit our hang out time into our training schedule.

People came from all over. My friend Katie (intern at University of Washington in Seattle) even drove from her home in Tusla, OK, to be there! The community amongst the RUF interns is very strong, and the other first year interns have quickly become some of my best friends. As I think about the old year rolling out and the new one rolling in I am deeply thankful for the friends I have made through the internship!

the interns and me in downtown Nashville waiting for the "note" to drop at midnight

Merry Christmas!…and an invitation for you!! (my house, January 5, 7-9 p.m.)

Merry Christmas! I am so thankful for all of you! I hope that you have had a wonderful day celebrating the birth of our savior with family and friends.

The coming of our Savior into our broken world and our celebration of it every December has been the perfect segway for me in conversations with girls as the semester came to a close. Several girls I meet with have difficult circumstances at home, which makes going home for a month for the holidays a challenge for them. Many of them feel as if they are the peacemakers in their family and the one on whom their family relies to keep the home running both physically and relationally. This is a burden, and many of these girls feel as if they are the savior for their families, or at least they are supposed to be. It was with joy that I told them that although it is a good thing for them to be peacemakers and to care about their families, they are NOT their families’ Savior. Christ came to save us and our families and often time this means saving us from each other and the wars we wage amongst us.

My first semester has (obviously) ended by now! It was a great learning experience. I learned a lot about myself and about ministry. There have been several students who I have really connected with and have been able to begin “a deeper dicussion” with about faith and how we relate to it. I look forward to returning in January after a long break and picking up in conversations where we left off. I hope to go deeper with these students that I have already met and also to continue to meeting new people, as the beginning of a semester always brings in new faces.

During this holiday break I will be catching up on my Study/Reading program that I must do for the internship as well as reflecting on this past semester and setting specific goals for myself and for my relationships with some of my students. Also, part of this break will be dedicated to support raising!!

***If any of you have not heard yet, or if you forgot, or if you lost the invitation then please note that YOU ARE INVITED TO COME TO MY HOUSE (120 Brookshire Lane, Pelham, AL 35124) ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 5TH FROM 7-9 P.M. FOR DESSERT AND COFFEE! Whether or not you support me through prayer or finances and whether or not you receive my update letters, please come! You are welcome to bring your family and friends too- the more the better! I want the chance to thank you personally for the way that your support has enabled me to reach Clemson for Christ this semester, and I want to update you on how things are going. If you have questions or want more information about RUF or what I do then this is the perfect opportunity for you to ask!***

If you cannot come, then feel free to call me and to set up a time to meet with me over the break! I will be in Birmingham for the most part until January 9th, and I’d love to meet up for coffee just to talk and to catch you up on what God has been doing this past semester. My number is 205.540.4046.

Furthermore, I am now beginning to raise support for next year! I will need roughly the same amount that I raised last summer- $32, 495. This is a large amount, but I will not doubt God’s faithful provision as he has not failed me yet in providing for my needs!

I could post several stories and updates from the end of the semester but I will save them for the Coffee and Dessert at my house!

Thank you all again for your faithfulness to pray and give on my behalf!

 

 

 

an anonymous gift

I received an anonymous letter and some money to buy Christmas presents for my parents, family, and friends this past week.  I am so grateful to whoever sent it! God has again reminded me that He is watching out for me and that I should be thankful for what I have been given. I am thankful for all you all! Happy Thanksgiving!