by Tyler Harvey | Feb 9, 2019 | News Slider, Student Spotlight
Imagine only having a 50 percent chance of survival and moving to an entirely new country within the first couple years of your life. These are just two things Lipscomb student Juan Oliva had to deal with when he was born. Oliva was born five months premature in Guatemala City, Guatemala. “The doctors told us it was 50/50 — the next day he can stay alive, or he can die,” Oliva’s dad, Juan Oliva Sr. said. When Oliva was born, his lungs were stuck together, and he weighed less than three pounds. “At that time, they were five kids born in the same situation; there was just one dose of medicine for that,” Oliva Sr. said. “He was the one at that time that had more possibilities to live, so they gave it to him.” Five months after Oliva’s birth, his parents noticed he was having problems sitting and turning. “He just used to stay still, looking straight. He couldn’t turn or do anything like that,” Oliva Sr. said. That’s when Oliva’s parents decided to take him to a doctor in Guatemala. The doctor told his parents that he has Cerebral Palsy, a disease that would require him to walk around with a walker everywhere he goes. The Olivas said they then decided that it would be best to move to America, where their son could have the best facilities to help with his disability. But Oliva said life in the United States wasn’t perfect for him. “Having a disability, you always had to deal with types of insults like getting called octopus or people saying the wheels on...
by Bridgette Begle | Mar 14, 2014 | News Slider
Spring break happenings are in full swing and Lipscomb students are everywhere from on campus to foreign countries including El Salvador and Jamaica. Students have been planning for their spring break mission trips since the fall semester. The women’s soccer team is heading back to El Salvador for the second time while other mission trips include Saba, Guatemala and Honduras. Junior Karli Crosby from the women’s soccer team is one of four from the original group that went last year. Crosby is excited and feels like it will be a different experience from last year. “I can’t wait to experience the trip that changed my life last year with a new group of my teammates,” Crosby said. “God is going to do great things with this group of girls, and I can’t wait to continue the work we started last year.” Sophomore Lauren Poe is also going on the second mission trip of her life with the Jamaica team. The team will mostly be doing construction of houses and visiting schools and infirmaries. “I’m most looking forward to being able to serve the people there and get closer with my [mission] team,” Poe said. “I’m also an education major, so I’m looking forward to going into the schools there and being with the children.” Not everyone will be on mission trips this break though. Senior golfer MacKenzy Carter is leaving from her golf trip in Hawaii to head to the Bahamas to begin her final spring break. “I am most looking forward to relaxing without golf or classes flooding my mind,” Carter said. “I love being outside, so I...
by Emily Snell | Nov 28, 2012 | Uncategorized
After a successful career in military defense engineering, Kerry Patterson thought he’d arrive at age 65 and start sitting “on the porch in a rocking chair somewhere.” But now that he’s reached retirement age, Patterson says he’ll keep teaching classes and going on engineering missions trips as long as he can. Patterson, who started teaching engineering at Lipscomb nearly 10 years ago, said he entered education as an escape from the “commercial rat race.” According to Patterson, his old friend from the University of Tennessee Fred Gillam, former head of Lipscomb’s Raymond B. Jones College of Engineering, called one day to encourage Patterson to join the teaching staff at Lipscomb. “When I interviewed with the provost for the position,” Patterson said, “Dr. Bledsoe said, ‘I don’t really think I have much choice because I promised your friend that a condition of his taking the job was that he had to be able to hire you.’” After a three-year stint in the U.S. Army missile command, Patterson spent 25 years doing work related to military ballistic missile defense systems. But Patterson said education had been a possibility in the back of his mind for years. “I always thought that sometime down the road I’d like to teach and I’d like to teach in a Christian university,” he said. “But since there weren’t very many Church of Christ schools that had engineering, I thought I would probably have to settle for math or physics. When this college of engineering thing came along, it was an even better situation than I had anticipated.” Patterson said he knew when he came to Lipscomb that he...
by Leah Raich | May 29, 2012 | News Slider
With final exams now nearly one month in the rearview mirror, Lipscomb students have turned their focus to their next objective – serving Christ across the globe this summer. Over the course of 106 days, from May 4 through Aug. 17, Lipscomb Missions will have 24 teams on the ground in 18 different countries. The timeframe is broad in scope – all summer long – and so are the locations and types of services being offered. From discipline-specific trips in Engineering that will be serving communities in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic to a first year trip to Moldova where a team of graduate psychology students will be providing therapeutic counseling to girls once caught in human trafficking, some students have the opportunity to take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it in a mission field. Students will experience a variety of cultures, from the two trips to Australia (Brisbane and Perth) where students will engage growing churches and encourage youth, to two trips in India where Lipscomb teams will spend five weeks in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta ministering in a country where Christians are the minority. In each of these missions, students will have the unique chance to literally “go into all the world,” as Jesus directs his followers in Mark 16:15. This year’s 24 summer trips are a record for Lipscomb Missions, up from 20 trips in 2011 and just eight trips three years ago in 2009. There has been a significant shift in the landscape of the Missions Program as the number of trips offered has flipped from being heavily weighted on spring break efforts to the current majority of summer trips leading...
by Amy Estepp | Mar 14, 2011 | News Slider
They’ve gone to a village in Guatemala, an orphanage in Mexico, New York City and points between and beyond. As usual, many Lipscomb students, with faculty support, are spending their spring break helping people in different parts of the world and also growing. Every year students, faculty, staff and alumni join together to partner with Lipscomb’s mission initiatives. Lipcomb offers a variety of trips both international and domestic. Hundreds of Lipscomb affiliates are involved and hundreds of lives changed. This year, the mission efforts began even before spring break officially got under way. The first trip departed at dawn March 10, leaving from Nashville International airport en route to Guatemala. Jordan Lewis, a junior nursing major said that she wasn’t nervous, but just excited to take part in the medical mission trip located in the Ulpan Valley of Guatemala. The Chattanooga native is a rookie to medical missions, but she is not letting her inexperience get in the way. “I expect to help with medicines and playing with the kids, and helping with the doctors,” said Lewis. “Overall, I am most excited about seeing a different culture and being somewhere completely rural.” This is the 10th consecutive year for Lipscomb admissions recruiter, Josh Link, to serve the City of Children. The City of Children is an orphanage located in Ensenada, Mexico. After spending every spring break of his college years in Ensenada, Link is now the trip leader. But what keeps Link returning to the City of Children? “I am most excited about seeing the kid that I have a relationship with,” said Link. “There is a kid that...
