This year’s Break on Impact team went to such places as Athens, Madrid, Brussels, and Yakama Indian Reservation, located in Eastern Washington. Pictured are a team at the ruins of Corinth (Top), in Madrid, Spain (Left), and eating lunch atop Mars Hill in Athens, Greece.

It all began early on Friday, March 5. Sixteen people shivered restlessly in Mac Circle, waiting for buses to arrive which would take them to the airport. This was only the beginning of their journey. Their final destination was Athens, Greece.

More students set out from Covenant later that day and the next. During spring break, 51 Covenant students and leaders went on RUF Break on Impact Missions trips to Athens, Madrid, Brussels, and Yakama Indian Reservation, located in Eastern Washington.

Many were greatly impacted by their experiences. “Going into the trip, I thought it would be a good experience but I never thought God would have blessed and used it in the ways He has and will,” said freshman Kimberly Gyger, who went to Greece.

In Brussels, senior Peter Yagel and others worked with the Muslim immigrant population. “We spent a lot of time doing cultural learning and speaking with pastors rather than doing evangelism. We learned how to pray for them. It’s important to not do long term damage with short term missions,” Yagel said.

The Yakama group “completed different tasks, including putting shingles on the roof, painting walls and ceilings of the office area, taking out the carpet of a house, putting in hardwood flooring, and constructing a walkway. A few people also helped pick up materials from an Indian’s house since he was evicted from his home.

“Every afternoon, we played with 30-40 kids. We were able to show them the love of Christ by playing jump rope, hopscotch, four square, and giving piggyback rides,” said junior Brooke Wilbanks.

In Athens, students spent time talking to university students. While with the Covenant team, I met a girl who came right out and said she did not believe in God, and wanted to know what we believed. As we explained the gospel to her, I could not help but experience some shock in the fact that she had probably never heard what we were saying before. As someone who became a Christian at a young age, it is difficult for me to comprehend living my life without Christ. I can’t even imagine how much harder life would be.

The next day, the guys on the trip, led by RUF Campus Minister Ron Brown, volunteered at Helping Hands, a local ministry which, that day, was helping refugees take showers.

“They would come in and get a number to wait their turn. While there, they drank some really sweet tea. We sat with them and talked with them as much as we could. It was really tough to communicate with most of the men I sat with. They were from Algeria. They spoke little English. With one guy I resorted to drawing on a napkin to communicate.  All of the men I spoke to were Muslim.  It was clear to me that they didn’t want to be in Greece and were trying to get to somewhere else,” Brown said.

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Riding elephants is just one facet of being a student at Thailand’s Chiang Mai University, as junior Kelsey Mucci and sophomore Waverly McMahan discover during their studies abroad.

Covenant College’s study abroad program has opened its doors to Southeast Asia and has sent three assiduously adventurous students to industrial Thailand. They are junior Kelsey Mucci, senior Jon Adam, and sophomore Waverly McMahan.

Toni Chiareli, professor of Sociology, was able to facilitate this opportunity through his connection with Michael Leming, who teaches sociology at the college of St. Olaf. in Northfield, Minnesota.

He talked with Leming at the annual conference of ACTS (Association of Christians Teaching Sociology) last year to learn more about the details of studying abroad in Thailand.  Leming has been leading students through this program for two decades through his own organization, Amazing Southeast Asia LTD.

Chiareli affirms Leming’s program saying, “the fit between his program and our goals for the newly developed intercultural concentration in the sociology department was very good.”  Leming and his wife are on site and are able to fulfill the needs of the students, whether it be academic or emotional support.

Students in the program study at the Chiang Mai University in Chiang Mai which offers studies in sociology, anthropology, language and art.

The program is a full-package deal. It contains an internship, and allows students to complete their foreign language requirement, cross-cultural experience and any other art and sociology class they take. Students can earn 16-20 credit hours.

“Elephant rides are an integral part of this program,” Chiareli concluded enthusiastically. McMahan also commented that they got to “stay in tribal villages for about three weeks.”
Mucci stated that the internship has been her favorite and is the most mind-opening part of her trip. She teaches ESL to third graders at a school for children who live in the slums. “There are many problems in the students in my class ranging from ADD to suicidal depression and latent issues from seeing parents murdered,” said Mucci. It is a great opportunity to open one’s mind and heart to compassion as they approach a culture very different from their own.

One piece of advice Mucci offers prospective students is to prepare for their minds to be challenged as they enter into a culture counterintuitive to their own. “Thai classrooms are, to the American eye, unorganized and hectic,” said Mucci. Children have been trained to cheat and not bother about individual work.

“I think another really great thing about this program is that it gives you a good chance to learn about Asia. I honestly think that Asia is an underappreciated continent in American studies. Even in missions, we focus on Europe, and South America, and Africa, but a lot of times we forget Asia. Thailand is less than 1% Christian,” McMahan said.
This program is not limited to just sociology majors. It can be extended to any discipline that has a study abroad component.

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Freshmen Stephen Bates, Paul Smallman and Robbie Brown perform at Project Boaz. Enoch Elwell ‘10 (top-left) accepts donations for tents. Starbucks Rock City (bottom-left) was in attendance to supply coffee.

by Kaitlin Fender & Sam Belz

In the past month, Covenant students have raised over $5,000 for Haiti relief efforts

Four days after the Haiti quake, sophomore Jane Travis, RA of Fourth Central, emailed the RAs, urging them to help Haiti however they could. Through the Haiti booth in the Great Hall, Saturday pancakes, a dance party, and a benefit concert, students raised more than $5,000.

Sophomore Evangeline Wilkinson, RA of Rowan, was inspired to do something of her own for the Haitians.

“When Jane sent the email, I knew there was mass destruction and all that,” said Wilkinson. “I knew I could easily be very disconnected and not even care because I don’t know anybody there. I knew it could be easy for me to ignore.”

Wilkinson asked Bob Agee, who manages Chartwells at Covenant, to provide batter for the pancake breakfast. When Chartwells agreed to donate the batter, the Mac RAs and Amanda Afdahl, RD of Maclellan/Rymer, decided that they would use building funds to purchase the remaining items, including toppings.

On January 30, Rowan girls served chocolate, blueberry, and wheat pancakes with coffee and orange juice. Those eating, who paid $2 to get in, could look at paragraphs from the World Relief website and articles about the disaster.

“Our hope was that people would stop more than once and think about what’s going on there,” Wilkinson said.

The response was beyond expectation. 100 people came from all over campus; outlets shorted in the first thirty minutes. They made over $300. All of the proceeds are going to World Relief, according to Wilkinson, because they’ve been in Haiti all along.

On February 6, Red Rave for Haiti, sponsored by Carter Council and also spurred by Travis’ call to action, raised $129. Sophomore Stephanie Sizemore, who helped organize the event, said, “We decided to throw a dance party in order to both help support Haiti financially, but also to serve our fellow students.”

Sizemore said the red theme was chosen because of its significance in Haitian culture, and to remind students that “ultimately this isn’t about us, it’s about serving other people.”
On February 20, the Project Boaz benefit concert, in collaboration with R3 International, raised $1,250. R3 International, directed by New City Fellowship’s Brian McKeon, is the PCA’s disaster relief organization. They have dubbed their Haiti relief program “Hope for Haiti.”

The benefit concert was the brain child of Covenant’s Communication Design 2 class.  taught by adjunct art professor Ken McElrath. “Brian [McKeon] asked my class to help him raise awareness and unity through our design skills” said senior Jess Gauley.

Project Boaz, named for the biblical kinsman redeemer that aided Ruth, featured a tent for the three aspects of the Haiti relief effort: “Pray, Give, Go.” The Pray tent encouraged students to lift up Haiti in prayer. The Give tent received money from students to give to Hope for Haiti. Originally, the money was to support R3 International’s initiative to send 650 tents to Haiti—Covenant wanted to send 100 of those tents. However, the money will simply be donated to R3 International to use as they see fit. The Go tent offered information to students who would be interested in serving Haiti in the future, when the country starts needing teams to help rebuild the country. Tabitha Kapic participated in this part of the event by staffing MedAir’s booth.

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by Anna Clare Freel & Lindsay Burkholder

To the beat of an African drum, the participants of this year’s Culture Fest marched down the aisles while waving flags from all over the world, including Mexico, Russia, Japan, Sweden, and Haiti. There were over 60 participants representing more than 20 different countries.

Nearly all were members of Covenant’s Diversity Program, a group created to celebrate the diversity of the student body, as well as “to connect people from other cultures with one another and with other students from this culture,” said senior Joey Veloz, this year’s student diversity leader.

“This is really a student-led event, and it is exciting and humbling to watch the amount of time and energy students invest in this,” said Julie Moore, Director of Student Life, who oversaw the event. “Culture Fest is designed to celebrate the grand diversity of God’s creation, and provide a fellowship opportunity for the Covenant, Lookout Mountain, and greater Chattanooga communities,” she said.

Senior Christina Canche said “it [Culture Fest] is really valuable, because this is the one thing that can maybe possibly convince the student body that we’re not, like, Affirmative Action in disguise.”

The first half of the program opened with a scripture reading from Psalm 96:1-4, the theme passage for this year’s event, to show God’s people coming from diverse backgrounds to worship Him together.

The acts were many and various, ranging from musical numbers in foreign languages to a mock Aikido battle.

Audience members particularly remarked on the performance of Shakira’s “Suerte” by an entourage of singers and musicians. Sophomore Rachel Young belly-danced to the song, returning after an appreciative response to her dance routine at last year’s Culture Fest.

There was also a guest performance by alumnus Andrew Russell, who works in the Admissions office. He joined his sister, junior Jamila Russell, to host the fashion show and perform a Bob Marley song. Russell said that he “appreciated the diversity in the music and also in the languages.”

Freshman Sam Bestvater sung a Canadian folk song that featured neither moose nor snow.

Senior Rachael Olivier closed with an update on Haiti. “We’re celebrating different cultures and different interaction and it’s good to be aware. It’s good to be happy and fun, but people need to know what’s going on in Haiti and what Covenant is doing on and off campus,” she said.

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