Who Will You Be: University of Montana

Here are the stories of 2 freshmen this year, as told by the staff at University of Montana:

Callie’s Story

To say Callie’s home life has been rough would be a drastic understatement. Tough medical issues, alcoholism, homelessness, debt, extreme bullying and teasing; the list goes on and on. Her dream was always to go to college. No one in her family has even graduated from high school, so her dream of college was a lofty one. But after a lot of hard work, she made it; her dream was fulfilled, but somehow it wasn’t what she has dreamed of. Instead of starting over, finding friends, and exploring the possibilities that lie ahead of her, she was met with extreme loneliness, girls in her dorm who drank all weekend, and even more hard times. Coming from a family who has dealt with alcoholism, she knows how destructive it is, so she didn’t want to go party with these new “friends” and would often sit in her dorm alone, crying, and wondering if all her hard work getting to college was wasted on one bad decision in coming to school at UM.

Then last Thursday, she ventured off to the school cafeteria to eat dinner alone. She saw her RA sitting at a table and went to eat with her. After dinner, her RA (not a Christian come to find out) said she was headed to check out this thing called InterVarsity and asked Callie if she wanted to go too. So they came together to Breakaway last week where I spoke about the Prodigal Son and the love of the Father for us. It moved Callie to tears. Not only did she hear about a personal relationship with God that night, but she found a community of people who wanted to be her friends, who accepted her for who she is. She also joined us for all the events we had going on last weekend (including the no hands spaghetti dinner in the picture). She told me today, “I was never the girl that got invited to do anything,” and that all changed after coming to Breakaway. She has been invited non-stop to everything we do!!

She sat telling me her story at a coffee shop today and she cried about how grateful she is to find friends, real friends. She said she feels hopeful that she didn’t make the wrong decision in coming to UM after all. I told her I think God has something big in store for her, and she smiled at me and said she was beginning to think so too.

 

Peter’s Story

Peter is from the Helena area and grew up in the Church. He came to college looking for a Christian group and found us the very first day of classes during our free BBQ outside the dorms, and he’s been with us ever since.

Last week on campus we did an evangelistic outreach through a tent called a “proxe.” The whole goal of the proxe is to get into spiritual conversations with people in a very non-threatening way. (The theme was “Who Will You Be?” and we were talking about how identity and spiritual combine.) Peter came and signed up for an hour slot to stand at the tent and talk to people about God. He was scared out of his mind, but he stuck with it, took a risk, and did a great job—and even got to share the Gospel with several people during the hour. (That’s him in the picture talking about the Prodigal Son story and the love of God the Father with a complete stranger!) He said, “I hope I was able to make an impact,” and he told me as he was leaving that he hoped to stop by the tent the next day even though he hadn’t signed up because he loved doing it so much.

Freshman doing evangelism and sharing their faith within their first 4 weeks on campus, freshman finding real community and friends for the first time, and finding God along the way—WOW!