Your most fulfilling time at HAC?

[Justice1976]

What was your most fulfilling time at HAC? What made it so?

Mine was in my junior year, I worked on the blind bus with a guy named Alan Stewart. I forget how we cultivated the bus route but we went over a lot of Chicago and picked up the blind members and took them home afterwards. One that I remember well was a guy named Don Wilkerson and his wife. I'm guessing they were in their early to mid thirties. Don carried his portable radio along with him everywhere. That's important to the blind. He was a HUGE St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan and he and I would talk baseball every week. He knew every stat on every Cardinal, both present and past. He and his wife were pretty well off financially and we had a standing event after all others were taken back to their homes, Don and his wife would treat us to hamburgers at Mr. G's on Ontario Avenue in downtown Chicago. I believe they may have been the best burgers I have eaten in my life. Mr. G's was a sort of hole in the wall, but they cooked over an open flame. The burgers were beyond delicious.

In addition to Don and his wife, I remember picking up a blind fellow who was about 12 years old. The kid would tell the most brazen lies constantly, it was really funny, but we tried not to laugh at him. He also knew the words to every Elvis Presley song you could imagine and would sing them on demand.

I never knew what happened to Don Wilkerson after I left HAC in 1981, but have thought about him bunches. I hope God has blessed him. What a fine man! I thank God he allowed my path to cross with his!

 

[Jo]

I had to really think about this one. Was it the time a bus kid threw up on me? Nope. The time my roommate begged me to wake her up early, then punched me when I did? Nope. The Sunday nights when I was so tired I fell asleep in church? The snow, the ice, or the fatigue from being on work scholarship, having a bus route, and taking a full load of classes?

There was one time, however, that a letter I wrote to a girl who lived across the hall from me was read aloud by Mrs. Evans at one of the chapels with just the women. She didn't share my name, thankfully. I would have been very embarrassed.

As I recall, the young woman I wrote to had flashbacks because she had been on LSD or something like that. She was adopted by a Christian woman who was paying for her to attend HAC, at least that's what the rumor was.

I wore an inexpensive CZ ring that my mother gave to me, and it went missing. The girl's roommate came to me privately and told me that her roommate was keeping things like that in a bean bag chair.

I wrote a letter to the young woman because it was so very awkward running into her in the hallways after finding out she had stolen my ring. What do you say to someone who stole something sentimental of yours? I basically said something like I forgive you. I don't recall that it was all that great of a letter, but the fact that it was meaningful enough to be read out loud to a group of other women touched me. You know how it feels when you say or do something however small and someone likes it or acknowledges it?

That was the feeling. A friend of mine turned to me quietly as Mrs. Evans read it aloud and said, "You wrote that, didn't you?" I gave a simple nod and life went on.

The ring was returned to me.

 

[IFB X-Files]

'F' Sunday School - we ministered in a nursing home on the north side of Chicago. It was a wonderful ministry.