Y4Life Teams are active and well in Lutheran high schools as well as on Lutheran college campuses. Concordia Wisconsin has a thriving Y4Life Team that engages with students on campus and people in the community. Bonnie Egger, a member of CUW’s Students for Life group, shares information about one of their successful service opportunities:
In the thick of the undergraduate semester, schedules fill and assignments pile high. Members of the Students for Life group at Concordia University Wisconsin, however, make time to volunteer and help uphold life, even at the busiest times in the semester. This November, twelve members of the school’s life team spent a Saturday morning volunteering at Blessed Again Resale. Blessed Again is an LCMS affiliated thrift store in Milwaukee that donates their profits to A Place of Refuge (www.aplaceofrefuge.org), a local home for women facing crisis pregnancies.
Blessed Again does not lack merchandise, thanks to generous donors in the area, but the influx of donations makes organizing, pricing, and shelving items a tall order. The extra hands that morning helped speed the work of sorting through donated items. After three hours with some of the group pricing and arranging shoes and some pricing toys and cookware, hundreds of new items were out on the shelves and ready for purchase to benefit A Place of Refuge.
What Students for Life at CUW loves about volunteering at Blessed Again is how multifaceted its work is. The donations to A Place of Refuge are, of course, an enormous contribution to the For Life cause. On top of that, though, by selling toys, cookware, furniture, and clothes for all ages at very low prices, the store enables families in need to purchase things—even necessities—that they might not otherwise be able to afford. They are able to reach hundreds of people and support them in caring for themselves and their children.
Because of this, Students for Life has worked over the years to develop a strong relationship both with Blessed Again and A Place of Refuge. The group also hosts a baby shower each spring for the moms who live at A Place of Refuge, which allows them to meet the women and children for whom they work and pray.
It’s exciting to hear about how the students of CUW’s Y4Life Team engage in service activities that directly benefit the lives of others in their community! We pray God’s continued blessing on their service. If you’d like more information about how to start a Y4Life Team at your Lutheran college, please contact Michelle Bauman, Director of Y4Life, at mbauman@lutheransforlife.org.