Encountering God through Chapel: March 20 – 14

Our last number of weeks have given us a variety of opportunities for encountering God through our chapel life at Hillcrest.

On Monday, March 20, we were privileged to hear from George Hansen of Kalona who recently hiked the entirety of the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia. George talked about facing his fears and moving ahead in spite of perceived and real dangers. 

Our next chapel time was Wednesday since Tuesday was a planned late start. We sang together in the Celebration Hall foyer for our Lenten hymn sing.

Thursday’s chapel was a time of reflection using light from candles. All had the opportunity to light a candle representing our openness to Christ’s light in our lives.

On Friday, we met in our SALT groups in anticipation of being together the following week for our Service And Learning Term experience. 

On Monday, April 3, the SALT group which planned a music program for retirement communities shared a few of their songs and talked about their experiences.

On Tuesday, we met in our small groups.

We did not have chapel the rest of the week for Iowa assessment testing and no school on Friday.

On Monday, April 10th, we heard from three of the SALT groups about their experiences – the Prairie group led by Mike Severino Patterson and Mike Goudy, the HACAP group led by Leanne Bender, Angela Snakenberg, and Mitchell Drey, and the Costa Rica group led by Sierra Cheney and Andrea Farrier.

Tuesday’s chapel time was spent in small groups.

Our chapel on Wednesday featured the Hillcrest Academy choir. They left then the following morning for the regional Mennonite school choir festival in Harrisonburg, VA.

On Thursday, we hear from the rest of the SALT groups – the Kentucky group who did work with Mennonite Disaster Service and the Omaha group who worked with a number of ministries in the city of Omaha.

Our chapel week ended with an Easter hymn sing in the Celebration Hall foyer.