Baptist Student Union Summer Missions Dinner Helps MC Students

MC student Sarah Harrell of Brandon is pictured with a youngster in Alaska during her mission trip last summer

Salmon fishing lasts all summer for people of the Kenai Peninsula in rural Alaska.

For five weeks starting in July, the southeastern Alaska site becomes a mission field for Sarah Harrell, 19, a junior at Mississippi College.

A member of MC’s Baptist Student Union, Sarah last year ministered to the people along the banks of the Kenai River during the peak of the salmon season. As poor Alaskan residents fished for salmon, Harrell joined missionaries “starting conversations about the Gospel and Salvation.”

To help pay for mission trips for MC students during the summer of 2016, the Baptist Student Union is hosting a dinner on the Clinton campus February 23. Tickets to the 7 p.m. event at Anderson Hall are $15 for students and $25 for faculty, staff and university friends.

Harrell appreciates the support of the BSU and the Mississippi Baptist Convention to make her journey possible.

“I felt really called. There are a lot of needs,” says the MC social work major. That part of Alaska is “non-religious as a whole. There is very little Christianity.”

Making her third trip to Alaska, Harrell will bring Vacation Bible School materials for her trip thousands of miles from her home in Rankin County. She and other summer missionaries will do lots of grilling to feed the Alaskan people in the region. “Last year, we served 25,000 hot dogs.”

Local churches in Alaska supplied the housing for BSU students from MC and Mississippi State, among others.

Harrell is among eight BSU students from Mississippi College who will be recognized and prayed for Saturday night.

Others going include Jacob Brooks who is headed to Southeast Asia. Lindsey Lee is bound for Spain, Haley Felder is traveling to Honduras, while Jared Letson and Carmen Sanders are both bound for the Philippines. Madison Crouch will do her summer mission work in Portugal, while Ashley Johnson will go to East Asia.

For more information, contact Brenda Holloway at the BSU office at 601-925-3238 or holloway@mc.edu