|
 The Ruth Institute’s message of lifelong married love crossed geographic, ethnic and denominational boundaries this past month of March 2010. We collaborated with students from Brigham Young University in Utah at the beginning of the month. At the end of the month, I spoke at Houston Baptist University to an audience of white, black and Hispanic students, along with faculty and community members. While in Houston, I also spoke at Rice University at an event jointly sponsored by the Catholic Student Association and the Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, which is an association of Chinese Evangelical students. In between, the Ruth Institute was featured in a news story in the National Catholic Register and in a blog on the World magazine site. The Ruth Institute message of lifelong married love truly appeals to everyone! Thank you for your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you!
The Houston Baptist University has just founded the Guild Institute for Christian Family Studies on their campus. I am truly honored that they invited me to give the Inaugural Lecture for this institute. I look forward to collaborating with my new friends at HBU on a variety of academic projects.
Our national student leadership conference, It Takes a Family to Raise a Village from last summer continues to bear fruit. The 32 students who attended that conference have exceeded our wildest expectations for student activism! ITAF alumna, Alisa Rogers, a law student from BYU, spearheaded the fabulously successful conference, Stand for the Family. Casey Gleave and Kami Nelson, also ITAF alumni, participated in the conference. Kendel Christensen won the second prize in the undergraduate student essay contest, and Thomas Alvord won the first prize for pro-family projects. (You can see all the winning entries for the essay contest at the Marriage Library site.)
At Rice University in Houston, the Catholic Students Association and the Cornerstone Fellowship collaborated to bring my talk, Smart Sex, to their campus. This too, was a direct outgrowth of last summer’s ITAF conference. Alumna Alison Contreras, a grad student in Environmental Engineering at Rice, did the legwork to gain the sponsorship of the Catholic Student Association. She contacted many other campus ministries and clubs to seek cosponsors. In the process, she and her husband Mike made good connections and built friendships with the members of the Cornerstone Christian Fellowship. None of this would have happened without ITAF! The result? A standing room only crowd of 80 students heard the message that smart sex is married sex and that hooking up and cohabiting have no chance of bringing true happiness.
Watch the video of Dr. J giving the inaugural address.
And of course, these fabulous student initiatives could not happen without your support. Won’t you consider making your most generous donation today?
The 2010 It Takes a Family student leadership conference will be held from August 12-15, 2010. Held at a retreat center in beautiful Murrieta Hot Springs in Southern California, this conference is free to qualified college and graduate students from all faiths or no faith, from all academic disciplines, and from all across the country. Students, you can go here to apply on-line. And non-students, please tell your young friends about ITAF! Send them here to apply for a long weekend event where they will learn why It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
Be sure to make your most generous contribution today. We make this conference available to the students at no charge. We estimate that ITAF costs approximately $1,500 per student. Won’t you help us help students like Alisa and Kendel from BYU and Alison and Mike from Rice?
|
