Recap Blog 4: Valentine's Day on STINT

Honestly, I was not expecting Valentine's Day on STINT to be that much different from Valentine’s Day back at home.  It just so happens that I’ve never been in a relationship on any 14^th of February, so the day tends to pass without much fanfare.  Sometimes I feel like I’m gritting my teeth through the bevy of roses and chocolates, but most years I just ignore it and wish people a Happy Arizona’s birthday.  (For those of you non-Arizonans out there, my dear state turned 100 this February 14^th!  I’m so proud!)

But love and relationships are a big deal for college students, and when you’re working for a college ministry Valentine’s Day isn’t something you can just ignore.  So we set out to plan a Girl’s Valentine’s Day party (on Feb 13^th of course—Feb 14^th is for dates) where we could strengthen our friendship with some of the girls we knew and hopefully get a chance to share the gospel.  Thus we came up with the theme: “What is Love?”  We had a cookie decorating station, snacks, and we decorated the house with hearts and streamers (which remain hung up in our living room to this day).  Our most theme-oriented activity was the painting station, where you could paint your answer to the question: “What is Love?” 

Postcards answering the question: "What is Love?"

In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure what we expected to get from this painting activity and how we planned to transition into conversations about the way Jesus loves us.  I think the hope was that our students would draw something abstract, and then we could ask them to explain it to us and why that represented love to them.  Mostly our students just drew hearts, though, and it doesn’t make any sense to ask why a heart represents love.  While it didn’t accomplish quite what we wanted it to, in the end it did give us a pretty collage to put on our wall. 

Marriage vows, the resurrection and hearts.

While I don’t think it accomplished what we planned to, the Valentine’s Day party did start some relational foundation work that was important for us to build for the future.  We got to have our friends over to our home for the first time.  We spent an evening making something together, and doing something unique.  The girls who came enjoyed the evening, and some of the girls who came are still connected to our ministry a few months later.

After celebrating with students on the 13^th, on Valentine’s Day itself we celebrated as a team.  We all dressed up and the men hosted dinner at their apartment, cooking up French onion soup, salad, lasagna, garlic bread, and cookies for dessert.  As a special treat, they took some time before the meal to tell each one of the ladies what they had appreciated about us this year.  Yeah, we’ve got some sweet guys on our team.

While I wasn’t able to avoid the Valentine’s Day hulabaloo this year, it was at least nice to be able to participate in some way in the celebration.

The collage made by us and our students.  Gold star if you can pick out mine.