Adventure in the Black Hills
Earlier this month, six students drove for over 16 hours to spend less than a day at a remote camp nestled in the Black Hills of S.D. Why? Because Union College believes in empowering people to lead. The Mid-America leadership conference was held at Flag Mountain camp near Hill City, S.D. on Sept. 5-8. The conference provides an opportunity for leaders in academies across the Mid-American Union to share ideas and learn how to become more effective leaders. Union College was asked to lead out on Sabbath. Union’s student chaplain, Jose Miguel Marin, spearheaded the team, which also included accounting major Allan Andino, education major Salissa Tonkin, graphic design major Nikki Hamiltion, theology major Irishura Gidioni and religion major Jade Covel. They left Friday morning and arrived in time for vespers, where they were able to start making connections with the attendees. They also discovered that they were responsible not only for teaching Sabbath School as originally planned, but also for organizing interactive leadership building activities in the afternoon.
During Sabbath School, the teens broke into groups of about 10, and one Union student led each group in a study about a story from the life of a biblical leader. Leading a small group discussion was new for Hamiltion. “I would’ve never seen myself helping lead a Sabbath school,” she said afterwards. She also was hesitant about talking in front of people, but she ended up gaining confidence: “I’m usually not a person who willingly gets in front of any amount of crowds, especially if it’s over 10 people. I’m glad I did though, it gave me a bit more confidence to get up in front of people and speak [and] helped me to see that being up front, or even just interacting with people, isn’t as hard as it seems.” Even the leadership activities were successful, and a group of teens who weren’t originally intending to participate decided to join at the last minute. Marin summed it up nicely: “God was working since the start of the trip. He was able to inspire us and make us excited to go and help the younger kids learn. And God worked especially on the Sabbath when we were tasked to lead an activity that we were never told of, which ended up being the best part of the trip.” You could be part of something like this. Just talk to someone in campus ministries.
Jade Covel is a junior studying religion.