There's more to life at Bethel than classes & seminars

Beyond the green is a place students to share the joys and hardships of being a Thresher.

  • Mudslam, AKA The Dirtiest Volleyball You Have Ever Played

    Mudslam, AKA The Dirtiest Volleyball You Have Ever Played

  • Mod Life: Finding Fun Amidst Stress

    Mod Life: Finding Fun Amidst Stress

Concert Choir Tour 2015

Concert Choir Tour 2015

The choir's annual spring break tour took them into churches of various denominations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, where they experienced amazing hospitality from an equal variety of people.
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Bethel in bloom

Bethel in bloom

It seems like we just turned around and suddenly it's spring all over the Bethel campus.
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Spring Fling 2015

Spring Fling 2015

Above is a photo from 2015's Bubbert Awards fun. The Bubberts capped off Spring Fling week, which also included Ultimate Trivia, laser tag, Capture the Flag and Bethel Olympics. Plus an Iron Chef Cook-off with a secret ingredient...
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The end of another school year

The end of another school year

Wrapping up, finishing up and moving out, as another school year ends. Our bloggers appreciate coffee, friends, beautiful coffee, summer plans, study breaks and ... coffee.
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Maphutseng – Weeding

In Maphutseng, we have been staying at the Growing Nations Training Center. While here, we have spent most of our mornings out in the fields. We like working from 6am to 1pm best because then we get our afternoons and evenings off. The work that the majority of us have done consists of working with tomato, carrot, and beet root plants.

The first couple of days we worked on the tomatoes, planting poles, wiring, weeding, and mulching. After finishing those, we moved on to the carrots and beets. We hand weeded and hoed this section. A lot of the work we did was simple and the same each day. It was just hard because we have traveled from Kansas weather to Lesotho weather (85 degrees), and we work in the sun constantly. However, this work did allow for us to have conversations with those around us, getting to know each other better, and it even allowed time for self reflection.

At the beginning of our time here, the fields we worked on seemed daunting. But by working together everyday, we were able to finally finish this task.

Kylie Jantz

Traveling through Lesotho

Traveling through Lesotho has been quite an adventure.  And it takes a lot of time.  If you look at Lesotho on a map, it seems small, someone said it was comparable in size to Maryland.  However, it takes hours for us to get where we need to go.  Many of the roads we have traveled on here in Lesotho have been dirt roads and very rough with lots of pot holes, much worse than the country roads in Kansas.  Riding in the back of the vans can get a little rough and isn’t always the most desirable place to be.  The roads here never go through mountains, they always go around them.  Up in the mountain they can be a little narrow too, especially when your van driver goes full speed around the corner with cars coming from the other direction.  One positive of these winding dirt roads is that we get to see a lot of the scenery, which is definitely worth seeing.  Lesotho is a beautiful country, bumpy roads and all.

Camille Claassen

Learning How to Take a Proper Basin Bath

I came on this trip expecting to only take about one shower per week. I especially expected it to be that way in the village where there was no running water or electricity. However, this expectation was quickly changed as Megan Siebert and I woke up the first morning in the village.

It was difficult to communicate with our host grandmother because she hardly spoke any English and we didn’t know any Sosotho. Luckily, a lady next door came over to translate for us. First, we were asked if we had bathed. After saying we hadn’t, she took us into the second bedroom where they had hot water in a basin waiting for us. Although our translator was speaking English, we had trouble understanding her with her accent. We finally understood that we were to take our clothes off so that we could wash ourselves. At that point, all modesty went out the window. We had failed to bring washcloths because it wasn’t on our packing list, but, luckily, our host provided them for us. Megan and I learned that you wash from top to bottom and at the end we would wash our underwear in our bath water so that we could wear it again the next day.

Learning to bathe in a different country with trouble understanding directions is tough. However, we laughed through it and realized that it makes for a great story and was a good experience.

-Natalia Krahn

January 15–Shanghai

After a good sleep in Shanghai’s fine Long Men (“Dragon Gate”) Hotel and a great breakfast buffet, we boarded our bus for the 30-minute drive to one Shanghai’s great tourist attractions, the Shanghai Museum. Opened in 1994 to rave reviews by the world’s museum cognoscenti, this carefully designed museum has over 200,000 objects on display, ranging from colorful costumes of  some of China’s 52 ethnic minorities, to an outstanding collection of Tang and Ming style furniture, to a remarkable display of Chinese currencies used over 3,000 years, to bronzes and to what has been described as perhaps the world’s finest collection of jade.

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January 14—Puyang-Zhengzhou-Shanghai

It was another 24-course breakfast in Puyang before boarding the bus for the 160-mile drive to Zhengzhou where we would board bullet train D284 for Shanghai.Just prior to departure, Mr. Li Da Qing, General Secretary of the Daming church, boarded our bus to express his heartfelt thanks and good wishes to our group.

Halfway to Zhengzhou we pulled into a truck stop for some relief and were amused by several of the ”Chinglish” signs in the restrooms. The sign above the lavatories urged conservation in water use: “Economy uses this water”; the hand washing area was dubbed “Water pool”; the foot pedal flushing device on the stools had the name “trample flush”.

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January 13—Puyang

After a nice buffet breakfast, we drove a few miles through heavy AM rush hour traffic in search of an easy access to the Dong Guan Church. It was built in 1917 by Mennonite missionaries and for the next several years served as the “mother church” of missionary work in the area. We were met by several elderly ladies who welcomed us by singing in Chinese “Silent Night” and in English, “Amazing Grace”.

Our final stop of the morning was at a large new church. Built in 2003, this structure has sanctuary seating for perhaps 1,000. We were welcomed by Madam Zhang Yan Min, one of the church pastors, and five young woman singing hymns around a magnificent new grand. In response to an invitation from the singing ladies of Mu En, our group reciprocated by a nice rendition of the “606”—the “Praise God” closing song in many US services today. Following the visit to the sanctuary, we were invited to a warm meeting room for some snacks and additional briefing about the Mu En Church.

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January 12—Daming

This was the day we would make a round trip to/from Daming, about 50 miles away, and the site where the W.C. Voth famly served as Mennonnite missionaries in the mid-1920s.

We arrived in Daming some 50 miles away at 10 AM and proceeded directly to the complex housing the former Mennonite mission. There we met Messrs. Li Da Qing, General Secretary of the church, and Zhang Bo Sheng, a church spokesman. Nearby was a large red-brick church built in the past few years, but now used largely as a Christian training center with some 60 local residents in regular attendance. More than 30 “Bible training classes” have been held at this church since its return. In a corner of the complex we viewed the “memory stones” of the three toddlers who died in Puyang, viz., children of the Voths, the Browns and the Kuaffmans. We were told that Daming County now has some 10,000 Christians who meet regularly in 47 “prayer points” around the county.

January 11: Puyang

This was to begin our three-day visit to Puyang and Daming, sites where Mennonite missionaries worked in the 1911-48 period before being expelled by the new Communist Government.

At the Zhengzhou train station we met our local guide, “George” who would accompany us to Puyang/Daming. After breakfast, we made a brief visit to the impressive Henan Provincial Museum which focused on the long and rich history of this area, termed by the some as the “cradle of Chinese civilization.”

Back on the bus we entered the major N-S toll road that extended from Beijing in the north to Guangzhou in the south. Along the way we were treated to good visual exposure to agriculture on the country’s North China Plain—an area not unlike that of central Kansas—with cold winters, hot summers, generally fertile soil, minimally-adequate rainfall and farmers in a constant battle with the elements. The typical cropping pattern here features wheat and then a second crop—corn, sown in early spring and harvested in the fall.

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January 10: Beijing – Zhengzhou

It was a relatively light “day” in terms of planned activities, but something the group welcomed after the rather busy program of previous days.

On this last full day in Beijing members of our group continued to explore this city—having gained confidence in the workings of the well-developed, and reasonably-priced taxi system. Some did some shopping; some explored the tourist-oriented areas characterized by fast food establishments and high-end boutiques; several visited the Beijing zoon for a look at that unique animal that is an icon of China—the panda!

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Church Service in Lesotho

Last weekend we got to attend a local Catholic church service with some of our host families from our home stays.  Many of the women in our group were lent traditional dresses to wear, similar to prairie dresses.  As we began to set out for church, one of the women in the community saw that some of us were not wearing the traditional dresses, so we were quickly ushered into her house and put into dresses.  Five minutes later we were back on the path walking to church, wearing long heavy dresses with blankets over our shoulders as shawls.  After the service I had a couple of women come up to me saying how proud they were of Lesotho and how happy they were that we were wearing the traditional dresses.

The church service itself was like a celebration.  A choir made up of young men sat in the first few pews and led singing accompanied with movement and dancing.  Towards the end of the service there was a particularly enthusiastic song, and throughout the sanctuary we heard sporadic high-pitched yelling noises made with the tongue and whistling made by women that added to the spirit of the music.  We were warmly welcomed by everybody in the church, and throughout the service it was apparent that the Holy Spirit was present among the people.

Leah Bartel