USA (MNN) — Up to 18,000 young people are in St. Louis, Missouri, for life change. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's Urbana 12 begins today. It's the largest student missions conference in the world.
The Mission Network News team is on location where they'll be finding the story behind the story. MNN's Greg Yoder met up with InterVarsity staff members arriving to get everything set up for this triennial event.
When asked what they expect over the next five days, Holly Lin–InterVarsity staffer at the University of Texas, Austin campus–says, "I'm just really hoping that all of our 20 students would just get a better understanding for loving Jesus and what it means to reach our campus, and then what it means when they graduate to reach our city (or whatever city they live in), and to reach the world."
Her husband, Kavon Lin, is serving alongside his wife this week. He says he's excited about "being able to see what God can do through college students, what the future holds for them and how they can affect society. "
Petek Altug, a staffer at MIT in Boston, says, "My first year on staff, I was only able to bring one student. This year, [I'm] bringing nine students. I'm really excited to see the ways that they'll be able to grow with God and actually bring it back to campus."
Altug also hopes these nine students will share their vision with fellow Intervarsity members on campus, which could have a ripple effect throughout the campus.
Samuel Opolot is from Uganda with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. In Uganda, it's called The Fellowship of Christian Unions of Uganda. Opolot desires to train students and challenge them in their quest to be more missions minded.
Everything at Urbana 12 is getting underway today. We'll have special up-to-the-minute reports on Facebook, plus our regular reports each day on Mission Network News.
