Summer 2007 - Northwestern College

Coverstory
Northwestern Classic
Summer of Service
missions during his Summer
of Service in El Salvador in
1992. Today he is a physician
at Partners in Hope
Medical Center in Malawi,
one of the 10 poorest nations
in the world—where 14 percent
of the population is
HIV-infected and there are
over a million orphans.
“The clinic has a staff of
70; one or two are always
raise their families, long
enough to hear the message
of salvation,” he says.
Coming home
After his summer in
India in 2003, Aaron
Willems ’05 moved back into
West Hall but continued
bathing out of a bucket until
Christmas. It was his way of
transitioning from his sum-
SOSer celebrated her return
to the U.S. by shopping with
friends. Surrounded with so
much to buy, she nearly
threw up.
Coming home can be
harder than going, say former
SOSers and those who
have worked with them.
Upon return, their life in the
U.S. seems irrelevant—even
irresponsible.
of Service from 1995 to
2003.
Kara (Wismer ’05)
Willems’ friends teased that
her Summer of Service to
India had changed her from
Barney to Eeyore, she
remembers. “I kept thinking
I could be making a real difference
back in India,” she
says. “It took awhile before I
didn’t feel guilty for just
goofing around with my
friends.”
“They have changed,
and their world at home has
not,” says Jill Erickson ’96,
who went on an SOS trip to
Amsterdam in 1995 and
served as Northwestern’s
director of missions from
2003 until this past April.
“They are more sober—and
more passionate. They are
more engaged with their
faith, but they need to find a
way to hope again.”
After his SOS experience in Kenya in 2005, Chad Benson ’06 wrote, “Different people reflect different aspects of God. What
better reason is there to learn more about this diverse world than to learn more about who God really is?” Benson currently is
teaching English in China.
gone to a funeral,” he says.
Still, Harthoorn’s work
fills him with joy. The new
drugs available to treat HIV
improve the health and life
expectancy of his patients.
“I can help them live
long enough to work and
mer experience—where you
might go a whole day without
water in your section of
town—back to America,
where his wingmates were
taking hot showers for 10
minutes or longer.
Another returning
“One week they are surrounded
by people dying of
AIDS, and the next they are
supposed to resume their
comfortable lives on campus,”
says Barb Dewald, associate
dean of spiritual formation,
who oversaw Summer
Going back
“I think I will always be
able to recognize a refugee by
the look in their eyes,” wrote
Erin Scholtens ’07 after
spending last summer working
with World Relief in
Seattle. “It’s a distinctive look
of pain that never goes
away—even when they
smile.”
After graduating in May,
Scholtens headed back to
Seattle and World Relief. She
reconnected with four families
she assisted last year and
spent a weekend living with
a Turkish family who had
just arrived in the U.S.
She brought her fiancé
along to meet her friends,
many of whom are Muslim.
22 ▲ Summer 2007