Parents
A newsletter for parents of Bethel University students
Blankets and Food Take Chill Off the Night
By Kay Wible
(from top left) Travis Adams, John Gianolous,
Rebekah Lorenz, Ethan Haglund
(starting from lower left) Jenny Hansen, Kelly
Lough, Skyler Dickson, Laura Brovold
To be “salt and light” in the world is one of Bethel’s core values, and practical expressions of this are found in the many ways students seek to serve others in their community and world.
An example is Peace, Hope, Love, Rage (www.phlr.org), begun last September by junior Skyler Dickson of Minnetonka, Minn., and several friends who shared his concern for the disenfranchised of the city.
“We wanted to find a way to live out our faith,” Dickson says. The group began by taking a meal, clothing, and blankets each Thursday evening to a site near the Minneapolis Basilica. By word of mouth, their presence began to attract a regular following.
Now numbering 30, the ministry has expanded to two days a week, with seven or eight students usually delivering the donations. The students themselves often buy needed items and groceries and prepare the food, but Bethel’s food service, Sodexho, also donates a meal once a month. Donations are welcome.
Their moniker reflects “a group striving for peace, resolved by love, and motivated by hope and rage” at the plight of the homeless, Dickson explains. Members say they receive as much as they give. “I find joy in hanging out with people God loves,” declares Matt Hulst ’08. “I’m able to gain a different perspective from them.” Adds junior Travis Adams, “I have learned a lot from my homeless friends—they teach me how to find joy in life.”