Winter 2012 - Wayland Baptist University Alumni Association

Anchorage student finds
Christ in the classroom
Story by Richard Porter
It never occurred to Julie Arthur
that enrolling at a Christian
university could ultimately lead
to her spiritual salvation — and in
the process give her a focus that
could change her life completely.
Funny how things work. That
is exactly what happened and the
new convert took advantage of her
recent graduation address to make
that point to her fellow students.
Arthur graduated this past
spring from Wayland Baptist University-Anchorage
and was afforded the
opportunity to present a graduation
address during the ceremony.
Her “civilian job” is a base engine
manager for Pratt and Whitney and
she is a member of the Alaska Air
National Guard. In beginning her
remarks to her fellow students she
made it clear what had been her
initial motivation for enrolling at
Wayland.
“When I first began attending
Wayland Baptist,” she said, “it was
because I felt it was what I had to do
and not what I wanted to do.”
Arthur went on to explain that
she didn’t have very good self-esteem,
had not been a particularly
good student in high school and
college didn’t seem like a realistic
goal to her.
She was faced with a conflict,
however. Her mother had always
10 footprints
“ On my 19th birthday
my mother died from
breast cancer. I was
angry at God and
hurt. I took her death
personally.
dreamed of her children going to
college.
Even that, though, was complicated,
Arthur told her classmates.
“On my 19th birthday my mother
died from breast cancer. I was
angry at God and hurt. I took her
death personally,” she said, adding
that even in her 30s she still was
“full of doubt about myself, academics
and God.”
Despite those doubts, Arthur
explained that out of love for her
mother and respect for her mother’s
dream, she went ahead and
enrolled at the Anchorage campus
of Wayland.
“I was scared and nervous,” she
said. “My first class was English
1301 with Dr. (James) Waller. He
wasn’t so scary until he said he
gave his wife a C. Then I thought to
myself, ‘Oh no! If he gave his wife
a C, what kind of a grade could I
possibly get?’ ”
As it turned out, Arthur wound
up with a B in her first college class
and that success, along with the
support from her husband, Don,
and her sister, gave her the confidence
to keep taking classes.
Something still was missing,
though.
“Every grade I got, every test I
passed, I longed to call my mom,”
Arthur told her classmates.
She acknowledged that she still
did not see any benefit to going to a
faith-based university other than as
an opportunity to fulfill her mother’s
dream for her. She still was a long
way from a personal relationship
with the God toward whom she felt
so much anger.
While she admitted in a subsequent
interview that she had attended
church as a child, she pointed
out that it had little impact on her
and that her husband had no spiritual
background at all, even though
he had decided to take a course in
Old Testament with her.
Arthur told her classmates, “Don
and I were not religious people. We
went (to the Bible class) with the
mindset that it was just another
class and wondered who would get
the higher grade.”
Funny how things work.
Arthur went on in her address
“