Students Travel to St. Paul for Beautiful Feet Mission Conference

by Sarah Groeling

After weeks of planning for a weekend of mission minded events, 18 Concordia students traveled  to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Beautiful Feet Mission Conference.

The Beautiful Feet Mission Conference in St. Paul was an event put into action by college students, for college students. The event gave college students from across the United States the opportunity to connect with fellow mission-minded people and learn more about the different ways to serve the community around them. The conference featured different speakers, service projects, and opportunities to learn more about sharing the message of the Gospel in the United States as well as around the world.

“It was really awesome to see people from different Concordias and talk with them about their experiences, especially how they used their experiences to go on missions and share the gospel abroad or in the U.S.,” sophomore Camille Bolte said.

The location of the conference changes yearly, with the event being held at a different Concordia college. In the past two years, the conference were held in Portland, Oregon and Seward, Nebraska. This year, students had the opportunity to travel to St. Paul, Minnesota to enjoy this event.

The theme for the conference this year was, “In Your Shoes” which highlighted the idea that each person was missionary in their day-to-day lives. Unlike past conferences where the emphasis was on worldwide missions, the conference that took place in Saint Paul focused on how the students could be missionaries at their college campus.

“The theme was touching to everybody. It showed us how, in reality you can be a missionary right where you are in your everyday life,” junior Briana Jordan said.

The speakers who were present at the conference included pastors Dr. Dean Nadasdy and Dr. Eugene Bunkowske, as well as Shelly Schwalm, who was a director of christian education. These speakers shared many of their mission experiences with the students attending Beautiful Feet.

During the conference, the students took part in a service event called “Feed My Starving Children” that involved packaging food items for people in Nigeria. One package of food items would provide an individual with enough food for a year. By the end of the servant event, the students packaged 149 boxes of food.

Over the weekend, students were also given the chance to explore the city of St. Paul and meet fellow mission minded people.