Visit to Mississippi College
 

Hey all!

The Riders are visiting Mississippi College today and tomorrow, and are having a Community Rally and picnic on tuesday. They're holding a prayer vigil on the edge of campus tonight from 8-11pm, and will be holding another vigil and dialoging with students tomorrow, starting at 9am, and will walking down the street to a coffee shop to continue hanging out around 5pm.

I was privileged to be able to hang out with some of the Riders last night and talk about things, and attended church (a progressive baptist church) with some of them this morning. It was really awesome, being able to worship with them, my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

Keep them in your thoughts/prayers the next few days they're here. Last year, the climate of the city, and the administration was very hostile, this year its harder to gauge things.. There are many mixed feelings on campus, people unsure of their stance on the issue. I hope God uses their time here to open up minds and help create a safer environment for the LGBTQ students here.

Newsclip of Prayer Vigil
 

http://www.wapt.com/video/17758803/

The vigil was really cool.... despite the fact that we had people drive by yelling at us, and people walking across the quad yelling things too... people came out for conversation, and since I'm a student, a lot of my friends stopped to talk to find out why I was standing with the Riders...

Tomorrow is going to be interesting... I think it overall will be good, but... interesting nonetheless... I have to admit, it makes me nervous... but.. we'll see what happens.

Dear MC: I can't begin to express my respect for the courage you have shown and the amazing journey that God is taking you on.

Bless you for taking a stand for justice, within an atmosphere that can be extremely scary.

Kara

MC- you will be in my thoughts and meditations tomorrow.

Day on campus, from an allied student's perspective.
 

Today..... was...

something that I can't even begin to put into words. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least, but there was so much great dialogue that took place, among other things...

Around 11am, we started chalking the sidewalks. There has previously been dialogue happening with chalk leading up the the visit. The administration has done their best to wash those messages away previously, whenever they could... but... today, we covered the entire section of public sidewalk along campus, leading all the way up to the stairs up onto the Quad on campus. It was absolutely beautiful! I had walked a few of the Riders down to get a bite to eat, and it brought tears to my eyes when I came back and saw everything. It was wonderful.

At 1pm, we got in vigil line- the Riders, and handful of other students and community members, and myself. We read an anonymous "letter from the closet" outloud in unison. During this, there was some yelling from the crowd of students gathering on the hill. When we finished the letter, Caitlin and Alex (Riders), another student, and I joined hands and walked onto campus and made it about 20 feet- farther than the 3 feet last time. We were stopped by campus security, Alex and Cait were escorted to the Campus Security office, and were then arrested by Clinton Police. they were released within an hour-ish, and joined us again. As soon as Alex and Cait were escorted away, I and the other student who participated in walking onto campus were swamped by newspaper reporters.

At one point in the afternoon, the grounds keepers at MC pulled out a hose and started to spray the sidewalk (remember, this is a PUBLIC sidewalk) and even started to ask the riders and some students sitting and dialoging on the sidewalk to move, and security actually stopped them and I guess told them to come back later.... But... they didn't leave before another Rider (Danielle) and myself went and sat down in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the campus stairs, haha.

Anyways.... Conversations continued when we walked down to Cups coffee house in Clinton, just off campus, and hung out there until around 8. Picnic will be tomorrow from 11-3, i'm looking forward to it!

There are pictures attached from today, and here are links to news articles, I was quoted and featured (not sure what will come of that yet, hah):
This article has a link to the newsclip too...
http://www.wlbt.com/global/story.asp?s=9208995

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pb...#pluckcomments

Be sure to check out the new posts made to the website with media links from the ride, Ana Kirey has posted photos :)

Thx
 

MC,

Thanks for being there and for participating so fully ! It sounds like you are being richly blessed by the ER visit and by your participation with them.

:pray::pray::pray:

MC,

I enjoy reading your posts about the events. Thanks so much for sharing these experiences with us. I hope you are keeping a journal. If not, keep posting in this forum and later you can print out a hard copy of your entries. Years from now you may want to write a book about it and the journal will be extremely useful.

Rick

Hi MC. Thanks so much for sharing what is happening. I believe many students were blessed to know that they are not alone. I applaud you for your courage to speak out and stand up for justice.


Gennee

:love::applause: