By Dakota Jackson, Salt Company Resident, Cottage Grove Church
Right before Christmas break, Salt Company DSM staff got the contact info for a freshman student at Drake. This is not uncommon as connections are made and contact info is passed along. One of our Salt Residents, Dakota, reached out to Declan to meet up, not really expecting any response as it was the finals week. But God is good and Dakota and Declan set up a meeting together before Christmas break.
During this conversation, it became clear that God was on the move in Declan’s life. He was incredibly willing to talk about his faith, which was evidently young, and some hard things from his past. It was a great conversation but not much more than an awesome introductory meeting.
As students are coming back for the Spring semester Declan reached out to Dakota to meet up again. He said, “Amazing stuff has happened in my life the past month that could only be God working through me.” And Declan was not wrong in the slightest.
Last week Dakota meet up with Declan and was blown away by the work that God is doing in his life. Declan is new in his walk with Jesus but had about a dozen gospel conversations with his friends and family over Christmas break. It is so evident that God is on the move in a mighty way, using Declan to help others understand more of who God is even though he is a ‘baby Christian.’ Keep Declan in your prayers as he is deciding what it looks like to reach those that God has put in his life with the good news of Jesus.
Drake University is a bit of a different beast when it comes to reaching out to students during the beginning of the Spring semester. Drake has a J-term, which means that for the first the first three weeks of the semester the students only take one class and they are not required to be there. So, for nearly 80 percent of the students, they decide to opt out of taking a J-term class and instead have an elongated break. Because of this, the normal rhythms of Salt DSM don’t get started until the end of January. During this time we are able to do some events in place of normal Salt Company on Thursday nights.
Our first event of the year was a Skywalk Scavenger Hunt where we sent our students into the skywalk system of downtown Des Moines for an hour to find and take pictures of specific objects to get points. The team that came back to the church with the most points in the time limit was the winner. We got to see over 30 students come out and get re-connected after a long break off. It is not the most glamorous event we throw but it is one that is always a great way for new people to get connected to the life of Salt DSM and friends to pick up where they left off after the break.
