CHCA Eagle's Eye 2014

Alumni spotlight
’10
Amanda Mary ’10
After Amanda graduated from CHCA, she
went to Evangel University to study elementary
education. She assumed that she
would be living the normal college life for
the next four years: living in the dorms, eating
cafeteria food, going to school, studying
into the late hours of the night, hanging out
with her friends, going to football games,
and finding her husband. But God’s plans
for her were different than that typical four
to five year college experience.
During the second semester of her sophomore
year, the Lord gave her dad a vision of her taking a semester off of school to “Be still and
know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). After praying for six weeks, she made her decision the day
before spring semester started. She would take the semester off. The first part of her dad’s vision
was for her to spend forty days removed from all of society. So for forty days she removed
herself from friends, church, and social media. She would spend her days worshipping God,
reading the Bible, and just being still in His presence. It was the most intimate forty days with
her heavenly Father she had ever experienced. Though some days were tough, she was able
to truly see and experience the Holy Spirit being the best teacher. She was able to experience
God’s peace during stressful times, and a new hunger and passion for her Bible arose. The Holy
Spirit showed her that the Old Testament can still apply to us today, and she became comfortable
with being quiet and still. If there were questions she had either within seconds, minutes,
days, or weeks, the Lord would eventually reveal them to her.
After the forty days, she began to pray about next steps for the fall. Within that week of her
praying, the President of The Agora School for Global Leadership, Randy Young, came to her
church and spoke about his “one-year gap school” with the motto: “The World is Our Campus”.
Feeling a nudge, she spoke with him after church, went home, spoke to her family, and
prayed for confirmation. Within a day, the Lord confirmed it.
Agora is a school for students who want to make a difference in the world while still getting a
college education. The purpose and passion behind Agora is for students to be in the marketplace
day in and day out, while getting a solid education, doing communal living together and
being discipled. She took 15 credits each semester with 12 hours of cross-cultural ministry a
week. The second semester she did the same things, but the last month of school she went on a
one-month mission trip. Last year, in 2013, she went to Thailand and Vietnam. There her group
worked with the nationals, ran kids’ programs, went into the slums of Bangkok and traveled into
the northern villages of Chaing Mai where they worked with a Thai pastor who took the Gospel
to unreached villages. In Vietnam, they worked at a conversational English-speaking coffee
shop where nationals would come and chat for five to six hours a day to practice their English.
In their free time, their new Vietnamese friends would take them all around the city (Karaoke,
the movies, dinner, and so on). They also went to an orphanage where they played with infants
and disabled children.
She was then asked to come back to Agora for a second year as a junior staff member. This
past school year she has done all of the same things as the year before, but this time she helped
lead the outreaches, mentored the new students, was a teacher’s assistant, and was a leader
on their overseas trip. This year her team went to Myanmar. While they were there, they went
to unreached people groups, worked at orphanages, taught conversational English to Burmese
students and were able to establish relationships with young Burmese Buddhists.
“The Lord has done so much changing and shaping in my life, but His plans are always so much
better than mine. I thought I would be graduating this spring from Evangel University, but instead
He has taken me on a journey that is far beyond my wildest dreams.”
This summer she has been asked back on as a part-time staff with Agora. Her job will entail:
administration, recruiting prospective students, and investing in the current students’ lives as
well as promoting Agora at churches/events and going on one mission trip a year. This summer
and next year, her focus will be to finish getting licensed as an Assemblies of God minister,
acquire her TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate, and pray
about going overseas to be an English teacher!
40
Class Notes
Stephanie Harris graduated from Calvin
College in May, 2014 with a double major in
Business Marketing and Sociology. She has
accepted a position as Account Analyst at
Adtegrity, an online marketing firm in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. She continues to be the
Membership chair on the board of the Habitat
Young Professionals for Habitat for Humanity.
Rachel Le-
Compte
and Alec
Swartz ’10
were married
on June
14th, 2014.
She will be
graduating
from Penn
Foster as a
Veterinary
Technician
in the fall of 2014. Alec will be graduating
from Mercy Hurst on May 18, 2014 with a
degree in Business. Initially, they will be residing
in Loveland, Ohio.
Erin Lloyd graduated
from Wittenberg
in May. She
has been accepted
to and will be attending
Medical
School at Oakland
University, beginning
in the Fall
of 2014. While at
Wittenberg, she
played two years of
basketball, was VP
of her sorority, and
was named to the
Dean’s List every
semester.