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ORU Students Get Up, Get Humble and Get Moving
By April Marciszewski - Tulsa World Staff Writer
Photo by A. Cuervo/Tulsa World
10/21/2005
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Gather them at a church in Tulsa's sister city, adopted for hurricane relief efforts, give them only six showers to share and blast Christian music into the crisp morning air.
Then stuff them with carbohydrates -- Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, banana nut muffins and bagels with slabs of cream cheese.
Get them moving with modern church songs and tunes from their childhoods, including "Father Abraham," complete with hand motions.
Then fire them up with mini-sermons: Don't be jealous for the best community-service assignments, reflect Christ's character in your work and don't underestimate what God can accomplish.
New Life Church in Long Beach feels like a summer camp this week, but here's the twist: Oral Roberts University students didn't come for craft time and canoe lessons.
They came to help homeowners pick through sewage- and flood-soaked household items, rake up nails and trash from a neighborhood park and pile broken tree branches into 6- to 8-foot stacks.
At the end of each day, students are sore from bending down and hiking around, but instead of complaining, they're singing to themselves and smiling.
Again and again they say they're here to demonstrate Christ's love by serving people in need following Hurricane Katrina's devastating trek through the Gulf Coast.
At work sites, they pray for homeowners and their properties. As ORU freshman Abigail Poyer pulls down a hurricane-damaged ceiling, she says, "Hey, it's all in the good name of the Lord."
Last year, about 350 of ORU's 4,240 students took 33 mission trips, ranging from two weeks to two months.
These journeys take students outside themselves and allow God to work in tangible ways, such as causing limbs to grow and cancer lumps to fall off, says Tammy Deyo, assistant director of outreach ministries. That's when students realize God doesn't change when they return to Tulsa and to the United States, and they begin to talk about Christ in their daily lives, Deyo says.
"They come back with a more outward love" of others, she says.
ORU President Richard Roberts says he wants students to know how to relate to people of all cultures and races because "Jesus said we are to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."
"It is important that their relationship to Christ and reaching out to others (are) central parts of their lives," Roberts said in a telephone interview from Tulsa.
It seems the students who are returning from Mississippi on Friday love to help. Estina Francis, a junior, felt helpless watching TV reports of Hurricane Katrina, and she thought a week of volunteering would trump a week of vacationing.
Students realize their help this week merely makes up a sliver of the work it will take to rebuild Gulf Coast communities. And their messages of hope in God and service to people deliver just a spoonful of the large dose of optimism Mississippi residents need.
But, as Francis observes, restoration in lives and towns is possible and has already begun.
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April Marciszewski 581-8475
april.marciszewski@tulsaworld.com
