Amanda Giobbi now mentors "her girls" in a D.C. neighborhood where 97% of the children live in single-parent families.
USA (MNN) ― This summer, more than 100 college students are giving up weeks of their summers to minister to the poor in eight American cities, carrying on Here's Life Inner City's 26-year tradition of "Summer in the City."
Each student will spend one to eight weeks between May and August ministering in jails, rehab centers, food pantries, tutoring, door-to-door ministry, and outreach events. The students not only give up the money they could make by working, they cover the expenses for their trips to Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, and Seattle.
"We send eager college students into the inner city for close-range, heart-to-heart, hands-on ministry," said Ted Gandy, national director of Here's Life Inner City. "These dedicated students positively impact the lives of inner-city kids and families, not just for the summer, but for a lifetime."
Many students use simple beaded bracelets as evangelistic tools. The children watch as the bracelets are made and hear the story of what each bead represents. The yellow bead stands for the light of God's love, the blue bead for the sadness of sin, the red for the blood of Jesus, the clear bead for the cleansing of our sins, and the green for growing in Christ.
"Everyone I met during the summer outreach thanked me, saying I could never know the impact made and the lives touched," said University of Virginia student Emily Woodley, who participated last year in Summer in the City in Seattle. "But they will never know the impression they left on my heart."
Often, Summer in the City participants go on to serve in full-time urban ministry. Autumn Shadis, a student at University Wisconsin-Madison, served in Los Angeles with Summer in the City. She's now interning at a church in Madison and working on a Master's degree in Global Urban Ministry.
Virginia Tech student Amanda Giobbi joined Here's Life for a spring break missions trip and interned with them after graduating from college. Today, she lives in Washington D.C. and works as a full-time mentor to seven girls.
On her first urban missions experience, Amanda said, "I was just brokenhearted by the poverty. I was out of my comfort zone - but somehow I also felt at home. I felt like I had found my niche." She now has the privilege of witnessing amazing transformation in the lives of "her girls."
Click here if you would like to help support Summer in the City.
