Move-in week is always an exciting time on any campus. New students experience dorm life and returning students come with hopes for a new year. The University of Northern Iowa has programming throughout the week for students to get better acquainted and many other student organizations and ministries do the same! The Good Life College Ministry out of Redeemer Church in Cedar Falls held its annual Root Beer Float Party at the Campanile in the heart of campus. This time is used to connect with as many people as possible, promote our other events, and of course have some fun.
One big change for this year was the duration of the event. In previous years we had only been set up for the evening. This was a time when we could get our event promoted through UNI. However, since the University’s programming has increased, student organizations aren’t able to promote the same way. This led us to make the leap and be set up all day from 10 am to 9 pm. As long and crazy as it sounds we can look back and be pleased with this change as we were able to connect and serve over 300 UNI students! Students were happy to get some root beer floats, freeze pops, and enjoy some 9-square in the air.
The biggest wins of the day were being able to connect with a Christian student from South Korea and another interested student from Burkina Faso. While we love connecting with students from the U.S. we also believe that God is bringing the nations to us to help fulfill the Great Commission. It is our hope that God would use these connections to reach more international students with the gospel! We were also able to gather many contacts to follow up with over the next couple of weeks. Again, it is our hope the God would connect them to us or another ministry that will help them see Jesus as He is and help them walk with Him.
