Making an impact—10 years out
In the summer issue of the Ambassador, you read about several of our amazing students who are making a difference among their peers, in the community and in our world. Now read about several of our alumni who continue to make an impact 10 years out of Asbury College.
By Kami Rice ’97
Back in Wilmore
Nathan and Cydil VanOrman Waggoner weren’t married yet when they donned their caps and gowns with the rest of their classmates in May 1997. They also weren’t planning to return to Asbury in the near future. They were ready to leave Wilmore and experience a bigger world.
But, just two years after graduation, with their wedding in the works, Nathan was offered the job of directing the WGM Center on campus. He immediately fell in love with the concept. He’d expected to be teaching missionary kids on the mission field. Instead, he would be investing in them and other students during their college years.
“It’s been amazing coming back,” he says. “I think the world has gotten even bigger for us since coming back because of what we do.” Leading students on missions trips during almost every break in the academic calendar means Nathan’s traveled to every continent except Antarctica. Missionaries and friends from around the world regularly pass through the WGM Center’s doors and stay in its beds, and last December Cydil and Nathan adopted now two-year-old Ellie from Albania.
Students impacted by what they learn from Nathan and Cydil and from visiting missionaries go out to impact the world in myriad ways, from encouraging their churches to be more missions-minded to going themselves to an international mission field.
Nathan points to the example of four recent grads and a non-Asbury spouse who together are pioneering a new WGM field in the northwestern corner of Uganda, only miles from Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. “It’s exciting to see that type of thing. These are students who probably wouldn’t have met up outside of WGM activities and Asbury.”
A few years ago her background in economics prompted Cydil to connect missionaries in Honduras dreaming of starting a micro-enterprise loan program with Dr. Sandra Gray and her business students. That partnership has spawned now-annual missions trips of business students who consult with small business owners in Honduras.
“It’s been really exciting to see how my interest in economics has a real role and place in missions,” says Cydil. She enjoys helping students likewise see that God has wired them with particular passions for a reason, that virtually any skill set is needed on the mission field.
In recent years Nathan has started focusing more intentionally on discipleship relationships with students. These kinds of relationships reinforce what students are learning in chapel, in class and in other campus experiences. “It’s what Jesus did,” he explains. “That’s what I see our ministry as being: an encouragement of the believers so they can go and carry on.”
Success and impact, adds Cydil, “is loving the people God brings into your path every day. If I can do that, I feel like it’s been a good day.”
“I think God’s economy of impact and our economy of impact don’t always match up,” Nathan notes. “Maybe as Americans we see impact as numbers, as doing something, and I think God sees impact as being something.”
Through mentoring
In Fort Lauderdale, Galen Chun also works with college students, though a very different population of students from those the Waggoners mentor. Galen says everything was transformed for him while he lived in the Asbury community, and he loves giving students the chance for that same transformational experience.
Galen began working as a mentor with students at College Living Experience during his grad school days. CLE helps students with learning disorders and diagnoses like ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome and high-functioning autism develop into fully functional, independent adults as they pursue post-secondary education. Now, with his doctorate in psychology completed, he’s the Director of Psychological Services and Social Skills at CLE.
The students Galen works with may be intellectually brilliant but aren’t able to make it in college without a lot of help. “I help them navigate this world in a way that empowers them to make choices and have friends, sometimes for the first time in their lives,” he explains.
We’re social beings, made in the image of a social, triune God, and, notes Galen, “We can’t live in isolation because of our deficits.” So, he gets to guide students with serious emotional problems into better socialization and relationships with others. He celebrates with the student who asks a girl to dance with him and for the first time in his life the girl says yes.
“Someone who is completely defeated—these are the nerds, the people who’ve been picked on because they’re different—all of a sudden they feel like they belong. Not only that, they begin to feel confident of themselves.”
Of the students, Galen says, “They’re amazing people to work with. There’s so much hope and joy in them. They really are turning into adults.”
As CLE enters a season of rapid national expansion, the psychological and social components of the program that Galen developed are being used by other practitioners to help even more students. “The fact that I could be there and make such an impact on that level is humbling,” he says.
“If you’re doing what God has designed you to do, you resonate. It’s right and there’s no way to describe that. I really feel like I’ve been designed to come alongside people when they’re in pain, deep pain, and be okay with that.”
Through writing
Now teaching creative writing and literature at Wheaton College, Nicole McQuade Mazzarella wrote her first novel, This Heavy Silence, while working on her M.F.A. at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Nicole’s tale of Dottie Connell’s struggle to hold onto the family farm in Ohio is honest about thick relational lessons and the importance of forgiveness. Yet, in contrast to so much Christian fiction, Dottie’s story is so truthfully told that it is finally wrapped up not with pretty bows but with God’s redemptive grace.
Nicole has received feedback from readers who tell her that the novel has helped them understand family members who responded to emotional pain with work, has shown them the effects of bitterness, and has helped them recognize small moments of grace in their lives.
“Hearing these comments reminds me why I write fiction,” she says. “Through story, we’re often able to experience truths in a way that we wouldn't through a sermon or teaching. I write fiction with the hope that my readers will finish the book with a greater understanding of themselves, others and God.”
General readers aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed This Heavy Silence. Nicole’s novel was published by Paraclete Press after winning a finalist spot for their Fiction Award of 2004. Library Journal listed the novel as one of the best books of 2005. Christianity Today selected Nicole’s book as the winner of the fiction category for its 2006 Book Awards, and it was awarded the 2006 Christy First Novel Award.
“I never expected that my first novel would be recognized or receive awards,” says Nicole. “After working on the novel for four and half years, my hope was that a few readers would stumble upon the book and through Dottie’s story they might have a glimpse of grace.”
She continues, “The entire process, from the days when I decided to cut out 180 pages of the first draft to the decision to send it to Paraclete’s Fiction Contest to the awards that have helped publicize the novel, has been a series of answers to prayer. So many friends and family members prayed for me during this process.”
Nicole says writing has always been her natural response to reading, and she’s dreamed of being a writer since she was young. It wasn’t until she arrived at Asbury, though, that she studied writing and was mentored by professors who helped her clarify her interests and discover how to pursue them.
She had not considered becoming a teacher until she worked in the campus writing center and worked as a teaching assistant her senior year. “These two experiences prompted me to teach while I was in graduate school and to realize that I also felt called to this vocation along with my writing.”
With new books in the works, teaching responsibilities and a growing family (she and husband Chris ’96 have a 2-year-old daughter and a newborn son), Nicole says, “My focus has not been to make an impact as much as it has been to attempt to be faithful in the moment. Sometimes being faithful meant returning to my writing after a previous day of writing for six hours with little to show for it.”
On the screen
Just to please his dad, Tim Peach added a business minor to his media communication major, and just to prove his dad right, that minor ended up getting Tim his first job in television.
Following graduation Tim did a lot of research and discovered that, outside of New York and Los Angeles, Wilmington, North Carolina, had the most filming going on. So, he moved there and doggedly pursued a job. Eventually, the head production accountant with Dawson’s Creek saw Tim’s resume, noticed the business minor and hired Tim to be his assistant. Since moving to L.A. eight years ago, Tim has worked on a variety of shows, including the Drew Carey Show and Everybody Loves Raymond.
“I just like to create and be creative,” he explains. “Writing is my strong point.” When he joined the writing team for Everybody Loves Raymond, it was a dream come true, much sooner than he’d expected. “Perhaps I should have dreamed of running for president, too,” Tim jokes.
Yet, once arriving in that longed-for job, things weren’t quite what he expected. “It’s amazing to me how what God uses is not what we envisioned,” he explains. “I wanted to come out and clean up Hollywood. Scripts are the lifeblood of anything on television or film, so if I can put my stamp on them…” Instead, he found that the impact he had came from just living his life faithfully and being in relationship with the people around him.
He never pushed Christianity on his co-workers. “The first most important thing was gaining the trust in my work, not coming in there with my own agenda, keeping my mouth closed, working my butt off.” That allowed him to become one of them and earn their trust.
“I never tried to set myself apart from [the people I worked with], but they were noticing things I did or didn’t do. Then they’d come and ask me. Then I was able to share little things with them and they were really cool about it.”
When work days extended to Sundays or religious holidays, people began telling him that it was okay for him not to work on those days. “I actually did take those days off because people would say ‘where’s Tim?’ and that could maybe start a conversation,” he says.
With a readjusted vision for how best to impact others, these days Tim’s sights are set less on particular accomplishments and more on relationships and on being part of the creative process in any context.
Released: Aug. 6, 2007
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Tagged: features, alumni, ambassador and class-of-1997
