By Amby Corder, The Salt Company Intern
July is a fairly relaxed month here at Veritas Church. We wrapped up Summer Salt for Salt Company students where we had about 75 students come weekly on Thursday nights to continue learning more and more about Jesus. A big reason for Summer Salt in our college ministry is to provide an environment for our students to continue being in community throughout the summer despite the fact that most of our students head back home. It gives our students that stay in Iowa City a chance to get to know our staff and each other in ways that are not as viable during the school year because of the large number of students we have. The students were able to come, worship as a body of believers, dig into His word and have fellowship time to follow which included our annual Wimbledon tennis tournament, ice cream at a local shop and a get together to welcome back our four summer teams that had just gotten back from serving the Lord for eight weeks overseas.
We also hold our connection groups throughout the week as well which give the students more opportunities to get to know those in Salt Co. in a deeper way and on a more personal level, continue being in community and digging into God’s word so that we can become more and more like Him. One thing that connection groups are super helpful for is giving a good opportunity for our students to bring in new students to Salt Company in a more relaxed and intimate environment. We’ve seen a lot of new faces as well as returners and it was even sweeter to be reunited with our students who were serving overseas for our last Summer Salt of the year!
It was great hearing from our students who were serving God overseas the summer and to watch them get giddy with excitement when they had the opportunity to tell all of what God did in their lives, as well as their friends, lives over the eight-week period they were gone. They had so many cool stories whether it was about the crazy culture differences, something interesting they ate or watching Jesus transform the lives of people who had never even heard His name before. One of our students, Danielle, shared a story about a girl named Rose who she desperately was trying to know and love Jesus. She met with her multiple times a week and the first time she shared the gospel with her, Rose was in complete awe and was shocked at the beauty of Christ and what He did for her. Danielle saw the potential in Rose and saw the budding relationship between her and Jesus and wanted to let the Lord work through her to help continue Rose on her journey on giving her life to Christ. Danielle kept meeting with Rose, getting to know her better, reading the Word and teaching Rose about Jesus and everything He has done for us. They were sitting in a bakery one afternoon and Danielle brought up the idea of what it would look like for Rose to give her life to Christ and while she was uneasy about the concept at first because she didn’t entirely know what that meant but the Holy Spirit was working in her and she had her salvation. Danielle prayed for her and then encouraged Rose to pray and hearing Rose pray in her language to the Savior for the first time in her life was such a clear sign of faithfulness from the Lord and it was one of sweetest things Danielle had ever seen. There are so many other stories from all of the students who went overseas but how cool is it that we now have another sister in Christ because of what God is doing in every single country overseas?
