My involvement with Sojourn began a few years ago while I was studying Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston. I vividly remember walking into my first Sojourn meeting, anxious and alone, I entered the room, “Hey Rebekah!” Greeting me by name was the Sojourn staff member I had sat down for coffee with the week prior. I couldn’t believe he had remembered my name! After only a few short minutes in the room mingling and chatting with students, my anxiety about being in a room full of strangers had almost completely dissipated. Soon after attending that first meeting, I started hearing about Sojourn’s alternative Spring Break trip coming up in a few months and immediately knew I wanted to go. Through interactions with my peers, the work we did on the trip, and the divine connection I was feeling to my Creator that I had been longing for, the heartbeat of the Sojourn community was revealed to me - and I knew I belonged.
Fast - forward to the present. I have completed a two years of an internship/residency with Sojourn and am about to embark on starting a brand new campus ministry at Providence College. I have the unique opportunity to lead the new team who will help students, like I was just a few years ago, discover God’s dream for their lives. Over the past two years, I have built relationships with students who have never been part of a faith community before -- and witnessed God working in their hearts through their growing curiosity about the role of faith in my life and what it could mean for theirs. Because of Sojourn I had the opportunity to: invite students to church for the first time and process the experience with them afterward, read through the Storybook Bible with students, serve alongside them in Mexico on our Spring Break trip, invite them to serve in their own communities, celebrate baptisms, sit with them in sorrow, all while also growing in my own understanding of ministry, the Bible and what it means for me personally to follow Jesus. This is the most mynute snapshot of what being a part of the Sojourn community both in college and post-grad has looked like for me. Ultimately, the experience has emboldened me live into the woman God created me to be and has given me the confidence to lead college students toward figuring out what it looks like for them to do the same.