My first year of college (it's kinda long)

When I was in high school, attending my last Christ in Youth (CIY) conference, I made the decision to go in to ministry full-time. I was interested in counseling and teaching so I figured I'd work towards family or children's ministry. I went with a small group of kids from the youth group and a few parents to check out some christian colleges in the midwest. We looked at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, MO and Manhattan Christian College in Manhattan, KS. Manhattan had several positives, I loved the little town it was in and it was right across the street from Kansas State University. The dorms were laid out in 'suites' which had more of an apartment feel and I knew a lot of people who were going to go there, not to mention my youth pastor and his wife had graduated from there. Ozark was nice also but they had traditional dorms and the town wasn't as quaint. I believe Ozark was the cheaper of the two though. When I had started discussing Christian colleges with my parents I had originally wanted to go to one in either California or Colorado. California was closer and more familiar to me and Colorado was beautiful. The problem was the tuition for any Christian college in those two states was at least twice as much as Ozark or Manhattan.

My parents were hesitant about my going in to ministry. They were worried, that as a female, I would have a really hard time finding a church who would hire me on full time. Fortunately a female pastor is more common now. They also reminded me that I might not find a church in Tucson (like Pantano) to be hired by. I somehow was convinced, although I wouldn't admit it, that Pantano would hire me after I was done with school. I acted like I knew all the possibilities and weighed all the options. I had in one sense, trusted God completely with my journey. Of course paying for school was another obstacle but my parents were determined to do what they could to help so as to avoid getting loans. I tried for different scholarships and applied for federal aid (FAFSA) but nothing came through.

Leaving Tucson, the home I had lived in my whole life, my entire family, friends, the church I grew up in, everything I had known was the hardest thing I had ever done at age 18. I remember one last night some of my friends came over and we just sat in my room and cried. When we got to the college there was a family orientation and my dad had excused himself for the bathroom, or so I thought. After he hadn't returned after about 10 minutes I went looking for him and he was outside of the chapel, bawling. I had only seen my dad cry a few tears once before so upon seeing this I, too, began to cry. As my parents pulled out of the parking lot to leave me there, later that afternoon, I went back up to my dorm room and cried some more. I didn't feel like eating for the rest of the day. There were a lot of exciting things that happened too. Like shopping for all my dorm stuff was fun, being responsible for myself was also exciting. I had met some new people and luckily had a good friend from Tucson join me at the college. I had applied to work in school library and got the position was which was awesome! My boss there was so friendly and caring. Being away from home got easier as the days went by and I quickly adjusted.

The college at the time had about 700 students total, and about 90% of them lived on campus. With Joplin being such a small town it was hard to find off-campus housing. Besides one of the requirements for a freshmen was to live on campus. There were also some trailer homes for married students; most were families training to be international missionaries. Us single students referred to the trailer park as "The Promise Land." Dorm life was a blast, although sharing a bathroom was not. The washer and dyers were in the basement and my room was on the 2nd of 3 floors (not including the basement.). If you were really lucky you might get a room with a window AC unit, otherwise you had a fan for cooling. Quite honestly I can't remember if there was cooling for the entire building or not, but if there was it hardly worked at all. I never was one of the lucky ones, but I survived. Of course, dorms were not unisex and members of the opposite sex were only allowed in the lobbies except for 3 days out of the school year: move in day, move out day, and a special open house where we could go visit each other's rooms. However, on open house nights, ALL doors were to remain open.

Classes were awesome! Since most students lived on campus the schedule worked more like a high school schedule. Most all classes were held during 7am-2pm. There were a few night programs for those working full time or for certain degrees/certificates. The teachers were all pretty much amazing. I can't think of one teacher I had who I did not like. I did have a few large classes like a public college. Those were most of the introductory courses like our Acts class or Old Testament class. I'll describe a few of my classes for you:

Acts -- This was probably my favorite class. It lasted the entire school year and had about 80-90 students in it. The professor was AWESOME! He was a shorter man who was funny, animated, and charismatic. Whenever there was a thunderstorm we would inevitably be talking about something extremly spiritual in the book of Acts and inevitably as the Professor was sort of retelling this particular part thunder would crash outside, like it was all planned out. We all swore he had some agreement going on with God. Our big assignment was to keep a GIANT 3-ring notebook detailing certain people, places, and events throughout the book of Acts. The binder was a part of our final grade. What was so cool about this professor, aside from his storytelling, was he would invite about 6-8 students over to his house at a time for a spaghetti dinner with his family. He really cared about his students.

Old Testament - Sadly I don't remember a whole lot from this class. I did enjoy the teacher. This was another big class.

Speech -- This was a smaller class, about 20 people but the professor was hilarious. We gave a lot of speeches and I'm so thankful for this class. While I didn't necessarily get over my fear of public speaking, it certainly gave me more confidence and skills to do it.

Teaching ministries of the church -- This was one of my favorites as it focused more on children's ministries and family ministries. Our final was to create a whole children's ministry with a vision, Sunday school curriculum, etc. almost all the things that would go into starting a new church. I had so much fun with it and got a good grade on it.

I had some general classes like English and writing and twice a week we all met in the chapel for a time of worship and a short message and announcements. During the second semester my schedule no longer fit with my working in the library and so I applied to work the snack bar for sporting events. I was pleased to get that job and now every time I go to a sporting event where pop corn is popping I remember the days of filling up the machine with oil and corn kernels and then the awful time I had cleaning the pop corn machine. Good memories! The food in the cafeteria was pretty good for the most part and I usually had cereal and easy mac in the dorm when I didn't want to go to the cafeteria.

There wasn't a whole lot to do in Joplin except frequent it's 3 Wal-marts for easy mac. We weren't allowed to go into the bars to play pool because there were a lot of seniors in the area who were financially contributing to the school. If any of them spotted us coming out of the bars, we would have been in big trouble. How they'd know we went to Ozark, I'm not sure, but that was the explanation which was passed around. We would frequent Springfield (about 2 hours away) to play hide and seek with hand held radios in the Bass Pro. shop which was full of Quakers or Amish people. We would also go to a DELICIOUS family-style restaurant for birthdays (you'd get a free meal on your birthday) called Lambert's Cafe in Springfield. They were known for throwing their hot, yummy dinner rolls to you at your table. One last major thing we did was go line dancing. There was a small, family-friendly (i.e. no alcohol or smoking) warehouse that would give a quick lesson and then have line dancing every Friday night. Students got in for a discounted rate, like $3 and while it was generally filled with older people we had a blast. Every now and then they'd play Backstreet boys for us younger folk. I even got to go cow-tipping, a.k.a being left in a dark field with waist-high grass and no flash light. We would visit friends homes who lived within a few hours of school and kept ourselves busy. I have a lot of good memories.

I visited home at Christmas and then again on spring break, but when I came home for the summer I had to make a tough decision. It has taken me a long time to be able to verbalize why I didn't go back to Ozark after that first year. At first I kept thinking it was because I wanted to be out in the trenches doing ministry rather than sitting behind a school desk learning about it. That is still, in part, true. I think at the time though, I felt like I was missing out on life in Tucson. People were moving on, big things were happening, like my brother recovering from a traumatic spinal cord injury, and life was different. I didn't want to miss out. I felt like I could stay in Tucson and still get an education which would relate to ministry. While I think my reasons for staying were wrong, I'm glad I made the decision to stay in Tucson. I met Jon a year later. I sometimes still feel a draw to working in ministry full time and perhaps God will make that opportunity happen at the right time. On one hand I'm sad I left after only one year with nothing to show for it except textbooks and giant 3-ring binders full of info on Acts, but I learned so much about myself. I'm grateful for the experience.