Students Heed Lyon's Advice through Mission Work
Mary Lyon hoped many of the women trained at Mount Holyoke would go out into the wider world and spread the Christian faith, and the summer plans of five MHC students would no doubt gladden the founder's heart. Anna Bersagel '00, Hannah Broom '98, Emma Kuipers '98, Agnes Sendrowski '99, and Jennifer Torres '97 will spend a month in Poland doing service and Christian outreach work in June and July.
The group--all members of the campus chapter of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, the U.S. branch of an international service and outreach organization--will arrive in Warsaw for orientation, then spend three weeks at a Christian camp in the small town of Wislaw in the mountains of southern Poland. There they will teach English to Polish students by using the Gospel of Mark as their "textbook." The group will also go hiking, study Polish, and work for a week on a Habitat for Humanity construction project.
"Mary Lyon's ideals are relevant to our lives," says Emma Kuipers. "I've read biographies of her and know she was very interested in having Mount Holyoke women be missionaries and serve people all over the world. This is very much in that spirit." While the group won't do street evangelism, they expect to have many conversations with Poles about religious faith. "Poland is a Catholic country, but many people haven't thought through what their faith means," Kuipers says, based on her experience last summer with an Intervarsity team in Poland. "They find it interesting and unexpected to meet Americans who are committed to their faiths."
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