Becoming Student Dean (and wildlife pictures)

By Anthony:

This new year, starting in January, I was appointed to be Student Dean here at Berea College.  I am excited to carry out this position, because it will force me to do more of what I wanted to do anyways, which is spending time talking to the students, caring for them, doing conflict resolution, hearing about their needs, and praying for them.   Those are things I already felt called to do, but before it was easy to feel too busy and not actually spend the time that was necessary.  Now that it’s my position, it has given me that needed push to take the time to really get into the lives of the students.  This has proved fruitful already.

There is also a Pastoral Dean, Rev. Martha, who is a new tutor at the college who started this January.  She is in charge of the chapel and student internships among other things.  We will work closely together as we try to care for the students.

In my new position, I will hopefully be seen as not only a friend to the students, but also an authority figure.  There is great need of more discipline at this college and the principal really wants me to help the students grow in maturity and in following rules.  Sara and I have also seen this need, and both of us are going to really focus on helping the students grow spiritually and in character this semester.

A new thing is that I am now leading the students every Tuesday morning with Rev. Martha through a series of practical discussions about spiritual growth and character.  We will focus on how to grow in our character in several areas such as our devotional lives, spiritual disciplines, how we relate to others, sinful behaviors/addictions, etc.  To begin, I am taking the students through Meier's Briggs Personality tests to learn about themselves, and their strengths and weaknesses.  They are having a lot of fun with it so far.  But soon we will take things to a more serious level, looking at character and our spiritual lives. 

When we came to the college we had not agreed to take on any extra positions like this.  Because of that, I agreed to be Student Dean if I could only teach three classes this semester.  I need time to be able to not only do my work here, but other work with World Renew as well.  So now this term I have three classes which are: Theology of Development, Homiletics (which includes preaching and hermeneutics both), and Church History 2 (mainly about the Reformation period).  Please pray that both Sara and I would be able to have good class discussions and good conversations with students, and that God would use us to help students to grow in faith, love, and holiness, and that we would care for them well.

But Caleb also wants to make sure that we don't forget to care for him too:

And we have to remember to care for ourselves too.  So over the holidays, we went to Lake Nakuru National Park, Hell's Gate National Park, and a tiny zoo next to the college.  Because we have work permits in Kenya, we were able to go to these parks for extremely minimal cost.  And with very minimal travel - one of the privileges of living 30 minutes to 2 hours away from so many national parks.

Pictures from Lake Nakuru National Park:

We didn't see the lion hunting, but saw it eating.

The same kill a couple hours later:

Pictures from the zoo sort of place next to the college:  (Ostriches are big)

Pictures from Hell's Gate National Park:

We hiked through a gorge.  It was very unique and fun.

A rock hyrax (we think it looks kind of like a small ROUS):