One Body United provides avenues to serve

By Mikaleh Offerman, Editor-in-Chief

Despite the stress of finals and end of semester project, twenty plus students participated in One Body United Sat. Dec. 1.

“One Body United is an opportunity for students to engage with organizations in the Shawnee area so that they can encounter places they can plug into and serve long-term,” junior family science major Abigail Corff said.

Corff is the head of the Volunteer Action Committee for SGA, which is the committee in charge of organizing the event.

“We sent people to two organizations, Community Market and Cargo Ranch,” Corff said.

Traditionally, One Body United is the spring version of Serve Shawnee.

“This year we broke One Body United up into two separate events, one that happened Saturday and the other that will happen in Spring 2019,” Corff said. “It gave One Body United the opportunity to be a little bit smaller and more geared toward two service projects that were a little different speed and range than Serve Shawnee.”

Breaking it up into two events also helped further the ultimate goal of Serve Shawnee and One Body United: establishing long-term service relationships.

“There are a wide variety of places that students can begin to serve in our community, and we want students to be exposed to those ministries so that they can establish long-term volunteer relationships in the Shawnee area,” senator and committee member Jon-ny Ball said.

The work for organizing it was divided up among the Volunteer Action Committee.

“Organizing One Body United required a lot of teamwork and a lot of communication with people outside of OBU,” Ball said.

Senate members part of the committee are seniors Jonny Ball, Casey House, Dakota Carrington, juniors Luke Fornea, Noah DeMoss, Andrew Joyce, Grace Harvey, Casey Jackson, and Grace Hill.

“Different members of the Volunteer Action Committee contacted churches to find transportation for students, contacted different ministries so that we could see where to send volunteers, and even contacted the Gathering place to get everyone who volunteered a nice cup of joe,” Ball said.

Ultimately, the purpose of the event is to serve the community, which is an embodiment of both OBU’s mission statement and Jesus’ commandment in Matthew.

“Every one of us has had moments where we needed to be assisted and poured into and loved on and encouraged and served,” Corff said. “Each of us experiences these needs regularly and each of us has the ability to meet these needs for our neighbors. This is what serving the community is. This is what serving the community does.”

Like Corff, Ball also emphasized the importance of serving.

“God has placed us in this place for a reason, and we need to make sure that we honor Him by serving our surrounding community,” Ball said.