Dear College Me: Kelly

“That Boy is Going to Break Up With You Over an Email”

In our first Dear College Me video, the above is what Kelly, the Program Coordinator of Real Life, warned her college self.  In this video, there’s so much more she had to say, like:

You’re not going to be defined by what people think about you…

For some who read and watch this, it’s been years, maybe decades since you finished college, but the truth that Kelly articulates still holds:

“God has given you gifts and he’s gonna use you to do things that nobody except you can do.”

Things like go to the red-light district of Thailand and open your own wounds so that a girl working at a bar can find healing:

I had shared truth and knowledge, yes, but He wanted me to use my messy, broken experience, my jagged painful past, to relate, to love, to heal. And not just to heal her… but to heal me.

So I shared my past with her, things that I have done that I am ashamed of. Things I have done that broke the Lord’s heart…She had to know this truth. I got to share the grace of my God, the restoration He has given me.  I told her I came all the way around the world to tell her that.  — Kelsey Messer

Things like witness freedom:

We asked which bar she was working in, and made a mental note to stop by after this and check to see how she was doing. A huge smile broke across his face as he told us where she was working: Seven Eleven. 

Not a bar on Bangla Road, but the Seven Eleven store down the road from our house. 
She quit.

She walked out. — Sarah Arant

We’re presenting six opportunities — including a human-trafficking focused mission trip to Southeast Asia and a missionary expedition through East Africa — for the spring semester (January — April 2012). God loves the people in these places so much that he’ll send you to them.  

Apply here; fill out this form with your questions and we’ll contact you; and most of all, pray. 

They’re worth “the trouble” (which, it isn’t) and he thinks that highly of you.