family

Native ��ñ�� Family Dinners—Being Fed Body, Spirit, & Soul

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 21:04:30 +0000

Nathan Peterson

Native ��ñ�� Family Dinners—Being Fed Body, Spirit, & Soul

Standing outside the house in the cooling air of a New Mexico evening, you hear laughter. Warm yellow light spills through the windows as you cross the sidewalk to the front door. Rashawn, the man you met on campus, welcomes you in with a big grin. Inside the laughter and conversations buzz even louder.

Past the sand-colored dining room walls you see two bulging bags of flour on the kitchen counter. People are bustling between the oven and sink. The savory smell of chicken and frybread thickens the air. Suddenly, you’re more hungry than nervous.

As more people greet you—one of them who you’d just seen in class a few hours ago—you feel a warmth that has nothing to do with temperature. From movies to bowling, they start asking you about your hobbies. Then someone pulls out the card game UNO, and everyone groans, “Not that again!” even as they settle down to play.

What you’ve just begun to experience is your first family dinner with the Native ��ñ�� chapter at San Juan College.

* * *

Everything you saw traces back to when Rashawn Ramone, of the Nambé Nation, went to his first family dinner in 2008 as a student at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. As the night went on, and he continued coming back week after week, his homesickness and anxiety began to melt in light of the laughter and deep conversations he was having.

After graduation, Rashawn became an ��ñ�� campus minister at San Juan College, a two-year community school. With no dorms on campus and a lack of community events, especially for Native students, he sensed a perfect opportunity to start hosting family dinners. Framed as a chance for a free meal and a break from the stress of schoolwork, the biweekly event immediately caught students’ attention.

“They always tell me this is a way of helping them to know the community,” Rashawn said. “It can definitely help them to be together, share laughs, know each other, see what the whole community’s like, and see the people. They never really had time to be able to sit down with other people and listen to them before.”

“I remember we had a slow start in the beginning trying to grow as a club,” said Shylasha Nunez, who belongs to the Navajo Tł’izí lání, Naakai dine’é, and Lók’aa’ dine’é Clans. But after four years of being involved with Native ��ñ��, Shy has seen it grow. “As we got to know our club members more, we became a family. Each family dinner, we have gotten closer with each other. Also inviting friends and family to join us made everything full of joy.”

A Thriving Family

By the time the food is all ready, the small dining room is overflowing with people. And they’re not just college students. Grandparents, moms and dads, even nieces and nephews playing tag, weaving between the grownups—it really is a dinner with the whole family.

Rashawn and several others carry over baskets of steaming frybread and plates of grilled chicken covered in a sweet, tangy sauce. After pausing to pray, everyone digs in. Rashawn goes on to explain that the chicken—luau chicken actually—is based on a recipe he got while visiting fellow ��ñ�� campus ministers in Hawaiʻi. He shares more about his trip and the many ways students are growing closer to God.

The meal continues, and someone asks what they should make for the next family dinner. The answers vary: green bean and mushroom soup casserole, dumplings, pork chops and mac and cheese, even spaghetti tacos, inspired by the iCarly show.

Whatever it ends up being, there’s an unspoken guarantee that it will be a family event, everyone chipping in to help, whether buying supplies, doing the cooking, or just bringing plenty of laughter and lively conversation.

* * *

Rashawn had originally started out doing all the cooking for family dinners and budgeting all the supplies as part of his ministry. But as the event has grown in popularity, several students asked if they could help. “This semester, they started to make the meals that their families make,” he said. “In a way, they’re sharing their story with other people. The food tells a story. It tells a story about where they’re coming from, how they learned to make the food.”

And once they saw the positive influence family dinners were having on Native students, San Juan College stepped in to cover all the costs for the event and help publicize it on campus. “There’s certainly not a lot of loneliness anymore on campus,” another student, Kelsi L’u Beth Monroe, said. “Our Native ��ñ�� chapter is the most active club on our campus right now. It feels like we’re this plant that was put into the ground, and it came up and has light on it, like a sunflower. It feels like we can be this beacon of hope to help everyone find their way in the darkness.”

Excited by the ways everyone was growing and connecting with each other, Kelsi brought her uncle to several dinners. “He was incredibly welcomed,” she said. “He said it felt like one of those old-style powwows in Oklahoma, when they get together and eat, like a feast.”

Rashawn has seen these events have quite an influence on students within the chapter, especially those who help host or cook. “They do have a better, healthier relationship with their families,” he said. “When Native students invite their nephews, parents, grandparents, or relatives, they always tell me that doing family dinners is really good for them.”

Sharing Stories, Finding Healing

After the food is cleared away, everyone settles back, and Rashawn says that Kelsi, a woman with cheerful laughter holding an infant, is going to share some of her story.

Kelsi begins explaining how her heritage is a little different than many Native people living in New Mexico, who are mainly Navajo. She is an enrolled member of the Southern Indian Tribe, a member of the Kitkehahki band of the Pawnee Nation, southern Cheyenne, Oglala, and Sicangu Lakota.

She shares how she first came across Native ��ñ�� back in 2008. One afternoon while sitting in her dorm at Fort Lewis College, Kelsi started hearing music and laughter. The smell of frybread wafting in through her window was the deal breaker; she had to go check it out. Walking outside, she discovered a crowd of people, many of them wearing Frybread Power T-shirts, like the ones from a favorite childhood movie of hers, Smoke Signals. “I wanted to see how to get one of those shirts,” Kelsi grins.

She explains that she’d just unknowingly stumbled across Native ��ñ��’s annual Would Jesus Eat Frybread? (WJF) conference. As she continued getting more involved with the ministry, Kelsi would return to WJF in 2016. “It made me feel very healed and renewed as an American Indian woman,” she says. “I already knew I could be a Christian and still be practicing my traditional ways and beliefs, but WJF just affirmed everything.”

The more she speaks in that packed little room, still smelling of frybread and luau chicken, something deeper happens than just a casual meal. Trust is being built.

* * *

Over the course of five years, many have shared their story during family dinners, including several pastors and priests who have partnered with Rashawn. Some moments have been light-hearted and encouraging, but many times as people begin to feel more comfortable with the group, they share more vulnerable moments, like how they’ve personally struggled with the historical trauma interwoven throughout Native history.

“There’s a lot of stuff like that, like alcoholism or drugs or spiritual brokenness. Some of the things the students share, they feel like it’s a normal thing,” Rashawn said. “The sin is telling us a lie. That it’s normal. Keep doing it. And that’s been passed down from generation to generation. It’s a spiritual brokenness, a spiritual lie to ourselves. But we don’t actually know it’s not normal for us until God reveals it.”

Rashawn has experienced this journey firsthand. For many years, he didn’t even notice the ways that the past’s darkest moments had been affecting him. But as he began receiving personal healing from Jesus, he knew he had to share this with others.

A huge part of this involves contextualization. “I think the family dinners are a way of contextualizing,” Rashawn said. “Contextualization opens the conversations about what it means to be Native and a follower of Jesus and the common ground of Native culture and Christianity. [Students] do want healing. They do want to receive the gospel in a way that they can understand. [We are] helping [students] understand how to contextualize the gospel into a Native context that can be seen through their families. The food, laughter, stories, community are actually helping Native students to heal. I think Jesus is definitely telling me that he can receive [this trauma] and help us to heal. And that this won’t go on to the next generation. It won’t hurt more Native families.”

Healing has taken many forms. A number of students have either rededicated their lives to Jesus or chosen to follow him for the first time. For others, their relationships with their families, communities, and churches are being restored thanks to the Spirit’s work through family dinners and Native ��ñ��.

“I have never been any happier to make changes and see healing in the future for our people and with God,” said Shy Nunez. “One of my greatest moments I remember is being involved in our community and learning a better understanding of what it is to be Native. I am not traditional, but learning the knowledge of caring and working together has changed my perspective and views of the world in a different way, where I deeply felt I can take bigger actions to help others.”

Many are discovering for the first time how their culture is a God-given gift and opportunity to praise and honor him. “God used Native ��ñ�� to bring me closer to my ancestry and also remind me of the wonderful and amazing and strong and resilient people that I come from,” Kelsi said.

“My grandpa always told me when you feed someone, you’re giving them life,” she added. “Family dinners give each of us life by nourishing our bodies through the sharing of food, nourishing our souls in sharing in the glory of God’s creation, and nourishing our spirits in fellowship with one another. It doesn’t just nourish our physical bodies. It helps our mental states to know that we’re not alone, our emotional states to allow us to open up to each other, and spiritual states in which each of us pray for one another. And we’re growing in a community and family.”

News Keywords

Indigenous Peoples Day

The Loneliness Crisis on Campus

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 11:05:48 +0000

News

The Loneliness Crisis on Campus

For Immediate Release

Students at Russell Sage College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, can easily find out who the Christians are on their campuses. ��ñ�� students bring them cookies every week. Students can sign up for the deliveries throughout the school year, the cookies are made by members of local churches.

One student recently told the cookie team that their presence was a comfort to him. He knew that if he felt stressed or lonely, there was a group of people who cared about him.

Stress and particularly loneliness have become a more ominous presence on college campuses. A survey by the global health service company Cigna has found loneliness at epidemic levels in the US, particularly with ages 18-22. A YouGov survey proclaimed Millenials the loneliest generation. The Higher Education Research Institute reports its Freshman Survey finds students rating both their physical and emotional health lower and lower every year.

These kinds of mental health concerns are familiar to ��ñ�� Campus Staff Ministers. “Students often don't know how to have conversations, do conflict, and link theoretical faith values to day-to-day prayer, vulnerability, and community,” said Scott Hall, a veteran staff member based in Kent, Washington. Before teaching about doctrine and Christian values, he said students need to be shown how to love, pray, talk, and share with each other.

On the campus of San Juan College in Farmington, New Mexico, the ��ñ�� chapter has countered loneliness with a tradition of weekly, family meals on campus for students. “It helps to be together, share laughs, know each other, see what the whole community’s like,” said Campus Staff Minister Rashawn Ramone. Before, “they never really had time to be able to sit down with other people and listen to them.”

��ñ�� President Tom Lin believes genuine community, much needed on today’s campuses, is the starting place for campus ministry. “Students need to have places where they can be themselves, ask questions, find encouragement, and learn about Jesus,” he said. “Our 2030 Calling will offer this on more and more campuses every year.”

��ñ�� starts the 2019-2020 school year with 1119 student and faculty chapters on 772 campuses across the US, from the Ivy League to community colleges. During the previous academic year, ��ñ�� saw 3,140 decisions to follow Christ through our campus ministry, up 39 percent from ten years ago. ��ñ�� is a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

For more information:
Gordon Govier
608/443-3688

News Keywords

Angel’s Story

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 17:05:11 +0000

Ashlye Vanderworp

Angel’s Story

Angel, from Hawaii, had a difficult childhood and grew up in a broken home. Eventually, she was taken from her family by Child Protective Services and became a foster child, moving from home to home, constantly running away from abuse.

“I prayed every single night, waiting for a better day,” Angel said. “Why am I suffering? A better day didn’t come, so I left God’s side and accepted a world of pain and darkness—a world where I had to survive by myself.”

At only 17, Angel graduated from high school and had to leave her foster home at the time. She hopelessly searched for a place to live, fearing she would become homeless.

“I had already experienced years of stealing and selling myself to survive financially, and I didn’t want to go back to that life,” Angel said.

A Huge Risk

That’s when her social worker took a huge risk. She told Angel about Brenda Wong, an ��ñ�� Area Director who owned a Christian community house. Angel hesitantly accepted an offer to move into the house, not having any other choice but to be on the streets.

For months, Brenda persistently invited Angel to ��ñ�� events. Angel consistently said no because, to her, it sounded like “a place for nerds.”

Finally, Angel came up with a plan one night when Brenda invited her to an ��ñ�� event again. “I’ll go just once, tell her I didn’t like it, and never go back again,” she said, hoping Brenda would stop asking her.

That night though, the ��ñ�� staff minister who was speaking taught on Matthew 14 when Jesus calls Peter to walk on water toward him, reaching out his hand. He asked the students listening if they would take Jesus’ hand as well. Angel understood that Jesus was calling her to him.

“I felt something warm, I wept, and I cried so hard,” Angel said. “That one night I went to ��ñ��, I gave my life to Jesus!”

A New Family

Now a part of the ��ñ�� community, Angel has a family for the first time—one that loves her unconditionally. She spends her time with them, serves with them, and helps lead worship with them.

“When I first went to ��ñ��, people genuinely wanted to know about my life. That was something that was so foreign to me—this kid that was pushed to the side, no one wanted to know about me, and yet everyone was asking me, ‘Where are you from?,’ ‘What’s your background?,’ ‘Who are you?’—I felt important,” Angel said.

More than that though, Angel decided to take a risk just like the one her social worker took that changed her life. Having once dropped out, Angel decided to not only return to Honolulu Community College, but to also plant an ��ñ�� chapter there. She wants to start a small group where anyone can experience God’s love.

Already, God has used Angel to initiate spiritual conversations with classmates, helping them connect what’s going on in their lives to the life of Jesus. Her vision is to speak love to those who are hurting like she was and to see her community transformed through her own transformed life.

“Because I said yes to Jesus, God is putting my old self to death and has brought me new life. He is giving me back what was taken from me. He has prepared the fattened calf and wrapped me in his finest cloth. I am the prodigal that came home!”

Just like Angel at Honolulu Community College, ��ñ�� students and staff are living out our 2030 Calling to plant on campuses currently without a Christian witnessing community. Will you be a part of making our 2030 Calling happen so that more college students across the country, like Angel, can experience the tranformative love of Jesus? Click the button below for more information.

Give to the 2030 Calling

News Keywords

story

testimony

community

University of Hawai'i at Hilo

Hawaii

2030 Calling

Honolulu Community College

The Cost, and the Reward, of Obedience

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 13:32:32 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

The Cost, and the Reward, of Obedience

Four years after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Derek Wu was on the fast track to become a vice president for a private equity firm, directing a team that managed $150 million in assets. He was also in a quandary, however, because he was finding ministry as an ��ñ�� staff volunteer more fulfilling than the financial markets.

For two years he struggled with God’s call to become a full-time campus minister.

“When I finally said yes to Jesus, to coming on staff, it was in part out of obedience but also because I realized I wanted more hours to spend on campus,” he said. “I couldn't do it with the ten hours a week that I was giving, I wanted to do it full-time.” But coming on staff meant not only financial sacrifices, it also meant sacrificing his family.

Derek grew up in southern California, the son of Taiwanese immigrants. When he came to MIT as a freshman, he wore a cross around his neck, given to him by a friend. He met some ��ñ�� students, who helped him settle into campus housing. They invited him to attend chapter meetings of the Asian Christian Fellowship (ACF), which he did sporadically. He was indifferent towards Christianity.

The following year his fraternity big brother called him on his indifference. ACF became his community on campus, and he began to seriously consider the Christian faith. He was particularly intrigued by the mention of hope in Jesus because he didn’t see much hope in his life. Due to a difficult childhood, Derek was dogged by feelings of worthlessness.

He recognized that a university education offers a kind of hope that results in stability and comfort if good grades in the right classes lead to a successful career. But that was not the kind of hope that attracted Derek. “At MIT the hope was in technology,” he said. “The great hope of humanity is education but it doesn’t touch the soul.”

His junior year he went to ACF’s fall conference at Toah Nipi, ��ñ��'s retreat and training center in New Hampshire. That weekend he heard the story of Jacob, who was called a deceiver in the book of Genesis, and was dogged by that identity for much of his life, until God renamed him Israel. “There was something about the idea that God could give me a new identity in that story that would set me on a new path,” he recalled.

Derek’s yes in response to God’s call to a new identity in Jesus Christ unfolded slowly, as he continued to attend large group meetings and Bible studies in his fraternity for the rest of his time at MIT. He graduated with a degree in Finance and began the career he had prepared for.

That was 2005, the year that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. When ��ñ��’s New England chapters began sending teams to Louisiana to help clean up, his best friend, still a student, invited him along. Derek returned to Boston after the trip with a sense that God wanted to give him an opportunity to do something that wasn’t for himself. So when he was asked by an ��ñ�� staff minister to disciple a couple of ��ñ�� students, he said yes.

That meant that Derek’s first ��ñ�� leadership experience came after his student days were over. “Those volunteer years were actually very formative,” he said. His mentoring role continued to grow over the next three years and he invested considerable time helping the MIT chapter improve its outreach programming so that it could better connect with students who were indifferent, as he had been.

And then he realized that God was calling him to join ��ñ�� staff fulltime. He resisted, praying, “Lord, you know my heart; let this pass.” But he sensed God say, “This is not about optimizing and stewardship. Are you going to steward your life for me or are you going to say yes?”

When he finally said yes, he had to tell his parents, who had moved back to Taiwan. “The conversation I had with my parents was one of the most terrifying conversations I’ve had in my life,” he said. While he called them, a small group of his friends interceded in prayer in the next room.

“Why are you doing this to us?” his parents responded. “You are shaming us.” He was disowned. The friends who had prayed for him in the next room became his only family.

Derek understood that parents who have sacrificed to send their child to college can find it hard to accept that their son or daughter plans to work for a non-profit ministry that asks its staff to raise their salaries through donations from family, friends, and other contacts. He hoped that his parents would eventually accept his decision.

As his ministry on the MIT campus thrived, Derek carried a heavy burden. For five long years he prayed for God to restore his relationship with his parents. They wouldn’t take his calls; there was no sign that they would relent. There appeared to be no chance that they would open their hearts to God’s mercy.

Then, around Christmas in 2014, Derek called his parents to tell them he was getting married. They listened. And then they talked. The family bond was restored. Last year Derek and his wife visited his family in Taiwan. His father told them that they were considering moving back to California, and his mother was even considering going to church.

“I was stunned,” Derek said. “Nothing I could have done could have controlled that situation. God is the one who is in control; all he asks of us is to say yes. The Lord is the one who works in hearts.”

New England has a reputation of being spiritually cold, more so than other regions. But as Derek—��ñ��’s Boston Divisional Director—leads ministry in the region, he sees God at work in the lives of more and more students, just as in his own life. “I think ��ñ��, God willing, is releasing a new generation of leaders that can help prepare the church for revival,” he said.

Derek is seeing it happen; the seeds of revival are taking root on New England college campuses.

News Keywords