I would like to give you the account of the most recent Civil Rights experience. I’m hesitant to refer to it as a “trip” because it’s so much more than that. It is a way for us to both connect with God while we connect with our history. Taylor University has hosted Civil Rights travel events for many years, and what a joy is it to walk into an important moment that our community endorses. Because of the generous donation from friends & alumni of Taylor University, we prepare with 33 students, faculty and staff to venture out on a four-day, three-city journey.
Many participants have friends traveling with us and have some awareness of each other, but we’ve never all been together in the same place for the same purpose. As we do introductions, check-in, load luggage, organize food, and settle the butterflies in our stomachs, there is anticipation in the air as we’re about to engage in something that we need to experience. In life, there are many things that you WANT to do and some things that you NEED to do. We recognize for most, this trip is a little of both. Every Civil Rights trip starts with an assignment, and the picture that you see of the group shows us engaging in that assignment. It has two parts. We do one now and the other upon returning.
We departed within two minutes of our originally scheduled time! Very grateful to the help and work of Elissa Bennett, who did all the pre-registration along with our presidential fellow, Sierra Twigg. Sierra traveled on the trip with us and managed logistics. It took us almost eight hours to reach our first stop. Now it is time that we would do the heavy lifting necessary to prepare for that stop. Most grateful that we were able to experience successfully “the departure“.
