College DOES matter.

Everyone else's posts will be on love today, I suppose. Mine will be about a book!

Missionaries are amazing people to me.

The first missionary story that I remember reading was at Southside Christian School in Gainesville in the 4th grade. We were required to read Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot. This was in 1976, only 20 years after the tragedy in Ecuador---so the story was still being told.

I read this particular book about once a year because it encourages me in the Lord to be faithful, and also because it is just plain amazing. I've always been intrigued by Indians. From my sister's Indians in the Amazon with whom I got to trade some money for their artifacts on my sister's front porch, to my missionary hero Marg Jank's Indians in Venezuela, to the Mayan Indians in Guatemala that some of my students and I got to see firsthand. My mom even said that I was obsessed with studying American Indians when I was a teenager. I had forgotten about that.

But this time while reading Through Gates of Splendor, I realized that Jim obtained his burden for WHEREVER God was going to send him---in college. College matters. He was busy working in the ministry in college when God directed him to his calling and to the people who would help him get there.

How sad that we send our young people off to "find themselves" instead of directing them to a place where they can hear God's voice speak His Will to them. I have a renewed burden for this. I think the RIGHT Christian college matters. For if the young adult is not busy working and learning how to prepare in the ministry, how can he be properly trained?

I'm proud of my roots, Hyles-Anderson College. I am so thankful for every minute that they taught us to love to go door-knocking, bus calling, and working in a Sunday School class while we studied to become pastors and teachers. We were taught to work hard and to love God while doing His work to last for the long haul no matter where we served.

College definitely matters.