After graduating from high school and moving away for college, I had to leave plenty of things behind. Not only did I leave behind my family, my home, and my friends, but I left my church and church family behind as well. My home church and the people in it are incredibly important to me, and once I moved to Mobile, I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to find a family of believers that could ever compare to my one back home. That's when I found my own family at the Baptist Campus Ministries.

From the moment you take your first step into the BCM, you are overwhelmed with an environment of welcoming faces and personalities. You place yourself into a room full of believers and immediately feel God's presence within the room. Whether we are playing a game of Fruit Basket or in a time of worship during Merge, you are always surrounded by a group of students who are willing and ready to love you and invest their time in you. There are plenty of open arms waiting by the door to welcome you and make you feel at home.

With "Gather, Grow, Go" as a motto, we find ourselves constantly striving to live that out daily by gathering in fellowship and worship, growing individually and as a family in our own relationship with Christ, and going outside the walls of the BCM to serve others on campus and on mission trips to other cities. The BCM is not like any typical club that only meets once every few weeks. When we're not meeting on Monday and Tuesday for bible studies and worship services, we gather together and meet for times of fellowship that are spent either playing games or simply enjoying the company of each other. By growing, we always stay plugged into each other's lives. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are always there to help lift each other up and hold each other accountable for our actions. Life as a college student can get chaotic, but the members of the BCM are always there to stand by you and help get you through it. By going, we never keep our fellowship inside the walls of the BCM. Whether it be through meeting behind the BCM to ENO, going out to dinner with each other, or traveling on mission trips, we always want to express God's love towards others wherever we go.

As I head into this summer, I want to take this moment to tell the BCM and all of it's members how incredibly thankful I am for them. Thank you for your unbelievable love and support. Thank you for the many laughs that you've caused and the many tears that you've dried. Most importantly, thank you for always providing me life-long memories that I'll never forget and always being able to strengthen my walk with Christ. I am going to miss the late Monday and Tuesday nights, but I am already looking forward to even more next semester. Thank you to the upperclassmen for pouring into me and picking me up when I'm down and thank you to the lowerclassmen for giving me the chance to become a mentor and do the same.