NGU readies students to make a global impact
Avery McGrail, News Editor
When the going gets tough, the missionaries get going.
North Greenville University held its annual Global Impact Conference earlier this month. Each year, NGU’s Institute of Global Leadership makes it their mission to highlight the importance of missionaries and make certain that students have opportunities to learn more about the world around them and the difference that they can make.
Extra chapel services are held, information booths are displayed in the cafeteria and a myriad of nations’ flags take flight around campus.
This year, the conference took place Sept. 14 through Sept. 16. Nik and Ruth Ripken were the guest speakers for the event. The couple has served as missionaries for over 30 years, spending much of that time in South Africa and Somalia.
Throughout the five chapel services that were a part of the conference, the Ripkens conveyed both the joys of serving others as missionaries while not straying away from discussing some of the difficulties and persecution that they endured.
The couple served through a Somalian civil war, famine, ridicule and the death of their 16-year-old son while on the mission field. Despite these hardships, the Ripkens’ were able to maintain a positive demeanor during services as a testament to their fulfillment from being on the field. This was evident to Brayden Smith, a senior Christian Studies major who served as a missionary during the summer of 2019.
“The Ripkens did a really good job representing what it’s like to be a missionary.” Smith claimed. “You read stories of missionaries from different periods of time and in different parts of the world, and many of them have similar experiences. The world is a dark place, in foreign countries and here in the United States. But the hardships they endured were always worth it because of the impact they got to make.”
Smith served in Denver, Colo. for the mission organization GenSend. During the Global Impact Conference, he spent his lunches at GenSend’s information booth in the cafeteria in hopes of finding recruits for future summer missions.
“Spreading the gospel is my passion,” Smith said. “It’s encouraging to know that I go to a school that cares about taking Jesus to people that are lost, wherever they are in the world. I have been a part of four of these conferences, and I’m always impressed by the number of students that want to be involved in short-term missions and even long-term missions. The amount of people I have talked to about GenSend during lunches has been really encouraging.”
One of North Greenville administration’s goals for their students, as made evident in the school’s core values, is to be mission focused. That mission is different for everyone. Some serve in war-torn Somalia, some serve for a short time in Colorado and some serve by ministering to their neighbors across the street.
But NGU desires to aid in helping their students find their mission, and the Global Impact Conference is an important instrument they use to help accomplish that goal.When the going gets tough, NGU prepares its students to make a global impact.
