By Dakota Jackson, Salt Company Resident, Cottage Grove Church
This year the Salt DSM staff has been taking intentional steps to try to empower our leaders to lead out when it comes to hosting and pulling off events that are great invites for people outside of the group who normally attend Thursday night gatherings. At the beginning of April, we got to see this in action.
There is a house adjacent to Cottage Grove Church that a number of guys who regularly attend Salt DSM live in during the year, affectionately named ‘the Salt house.’ These guys and some of our other Salt DSM leaders pulled together to throw a pancake party in the house and invite as many people as they could from campus. We were super encouraged and proud of our leaders for taking the initiative and making something like this happen. It is a joy for students to have a place where they could invite their friends and build community through the common experience of making pancakes and playing games.
Elena and Emily are two freshman roommates at Drake this year and have already made a significant impact on that campus and in the life of Salt DSM. Both of these gals decided to take Theology of the Gospel this semester which is our theological equipping course for students. Neither one of them missed a class and they became the most open and willingly contributive members of the whole class. As the class came to a close we talked about baptism and the importance of being obedient to Christ in the display of our death to sin and new life in him through the waters of baptism. As we were unpacking these truths the wheels in Elena’s brain began to turn. She expressed some hesitations about getting baptized, she was as an infant but was at least open to the idea.
As Easter rolled around baptism are a staple of Cottage Grove Church during this time and so we were hoping to see Elana’s name on the sign-up list but she decided not to this time around. As the 8:00 service was going on and Pastor Andy opened the call for anybody to come and be baptized who had not yet we saw two young ladies make their way down the side of the sanctuary. Elena, with Emily right behind her, came down and with tears in her eyes said that she was ready to be baptized. She stepped up and Pastor Rechab helped her into the pool and then invited Emily up to do this with him. So Emily got to participate in the awesome display of faith that her friend and roommate expressed! What an awesome scene it was for these two gals and we cannot wait to see how God will continue to use them on Drake’s campus and in Salt DSM.
