Five students were selected to receive the first Season of Service Supplemental Award offered by Financial Aid for Service for the video presentation of their response to the essay question for rising seniors. The supplemental award was offered to Student Opportunity Scholarship and National Presbyterian College Scholarship recipients in the spring of the student’s junior year. Students participating in these programs have been preparing essays on topics related to vocation. In the final essay, students are asked to reflect on all they have written and learned from their essays, and respond to the question: What’s next for you? For the church? For the world?
Kirin Foster, a rising senior attending Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington was the first student to submit a video in this cycle. Kirin is a member of Marine View Presbyterian Church in the Presbytery of Olympia, and participates in the life of the community at Millwood Community Presbyterian Church during the school year. She has been awarded the National Presbyterian College Scholarship, the Season of Service Supplemental Award, and a book award for the first complete applicant in the undergraduate cohort.
When Brandon Comella, Youth Minister at Millwood Community Church, was contacted for a comment, he responded with great enthusiasm. “I feel blessed that Kirin Foster has been a part of my youth ministry with the middle schoolers at Millwood Community Presbyterian Church in Spokane Valley, Washington for the past several years. She is following a group of 8th grade girls up to high school for her senior year this coming fall and myself, as well as those kids are so excited. Kirin has an array of gifts, but her passion for kids, the people around her, and God is unlike anything else. It seems as though the room brightens when she enters it because her big smile and bright spirit is so overwhelming. Teenage girls flock to her, and I have witnessed a handful of times when their faces light up the moment she enters the room at youth group, or especially when she goes to visit them at their school lunch. Her ability to have fun with them, while showing Christ through her actions, as well as her words during small group times that happen every other week is outstanding. I am blessed to know Kirin and am so excited for what God has planned next in her life.”
"The question was inspired by the new mission agency website for young adults," Laura Bryan, associate for Financial Aid said. "Despite the fact that students graduating today are confronted with the burden of student loan debt and stagnant wages, the responses to the question have been as positive as Kirin's winsomely expressed vision of what is next for the church and the world. The class of 2015 is not daunted by the challenges they face."
Over the next six weeks, additional video responses prepared by the 2015 graduating class will be added to the Financial Aid for Service website. We invite you to share your prayers for what's next for the class of 2015 in the comments.