CHIC Students Donate $109,327 to Support Thailand Mission

Post a Comment » Written on July 17th, 2009     
Filed under: News
KNOXVILLE, TN (July 17, 2009) – Students at CHIC2009 gave $109,327 to sustainable mission projects in Thailand during the event’s closing worship service Thursday evening.

The dollar amount was one of several staggering numbers that showed the generosity and compassion of the 5,500 students who attended the Evangelical Covenant Church’s triennial youth event. Over the course of the week, they also packed 427,896 meals for people in Africa who suffer extreme hunger and wrote 2,853 letters to officials around the world imploring them to fight human trafficking.

FoodTo announce the offering, worship leader Matt Lundgren had five people line up on stage holding cards that each had a number of the donated amount hidden from the audience.
When Lundgren had the five flip the cards to reveal how much money had been donated, the cards showed $63,271, generating loud applause throughout the arena.

Then, in a playful moment, Lundgren advised North Park University Campus Pastor Judy Peterson that the “6” she was holding was upside down. The crowd roared when she flipped it over to reveal an offering of $93,271.

But Lundgren wasn’t finished. Another person walked out on stage holding a card with a “0” – and Lundgren proceeded to re-shuffle the order of the lineup to reveal the final total of $109,327.

Months before the students arrived in Knoxville, CHIC organizers had been preparing them for the special offering by providing information on Covenant projects in Thailand. Three students who traveled to Thailand to gain first-hand knowledge of the missions work had been providing satellite-feed updates from Thailand earlier in the week – and on Wednesday evening made a surprise appearance on the CHIC stage after an exhausting flight from Bangkok. They urged the CHIC students to give generously to help make a positive, permanent difference through Covenant projects in that Southeast Asian country.

For more on the students and their trip, click here. To learn more about each of the Thailand projects, click here.

All week, students packed meals at the Thompson-Boling Arena for people living in areas of extreme hunger (see acccompanying photo). The Christian organization Feed My Starving Children will distribute the meals.

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