The summer after my freshman year of college messed up my life. I had it all planned out. My first year of college had been amazing. I’d made a ton of new friends whom I loved spending time with and I had started dating a girl early in the year.
To the parents of my students, Hi. My name is Brittany. We’ve never met before, but I spend a lot of time with your college student. Actually, I probably spend more time with them than you do during the school year.
When I was in college, my friends and I joked that if someone went on staff with InterVarsity, God would reward this sacrifice by blessing the person with a spouse.
Do you secretly want to have sex with a bunch of your Facebook friends? Too cowardly to have a real relationship, to actually know and be known? Can’t be bothered to commit to love and care for someone? Trying to blow off the relationship (or marriage) you’re in?
It feels like eons ago (13 years) that I was dating, and honestly, I don’t look back fondly on that time—the tribulations of crushes and attempting to read men’s minds, the wasted conversational hours obsessing over who likes whom.
Ziel Machado knows what it means to persevere physically, spiritually, and vocationally. After a crisis of faith in his teenage years, he sensed God calling him to student ministry—and he’s been at it for over thirty years now.
At InterVarsity, our ministry is guided by four key principles. I can’t remember what they are right now, but I know that we have them lying around the office somewhere.
