One of the things I have admired about Dr Williams over the years I have been around him is that he rarely speaks without sharing a story about a student or former student. He is a President driven by his love and care for students, and those stories have helped many of us to reflect more on how we serve at Cairn.

Cairn has students all over the world doing amazing work, and you often get to read those stories in our magazine or online. As I introduced last month we are going to tell some more of those stories, but from a slightly different angle, perhaps more transparent, more processional, as we share the stories of the Unlikely, the beautiful pictures of Unlikely people doing Unlikely things in Unlikely places.

If you have ever read any of my writing before, you will know my style tends more towards being more raw, less sanitized than what we often get in Christian settings. I write openly about our family, struggles, brokenness and pain that all come with life, especially life in hard places. I hope these stories follow that same theme.

“How can we get more students like Lizzie?” Asked Rachel Kim, the director of Esperanza Health Center’s Community Health Department.  “She is amazing.”

“Lizzie’s cool people,” said Nes Espinosa, a high compliment from the founder of Timoteo Sports Ministries and one of Philadelphia’s best known youth ministers.

“Lizzie has made a real impact on us,” commented Matt Lin, pastor of One Hope and an instrumental person in launching Vocatio, a vocational technical high school in Hunting Park.

“I can’t imagine how we would have made it through these last months without Lizzie,” Joyce said more than once to me.

I have to say, I may have been late getting on the Lizzie bandwagon, so let’s go back a bit in time.

Lizzie grew up in a non-Christian home, so the idea of going to a Christian University was always a challenge.  Her first year, like many in that cohort, was a rocky one.  Lizzie’s default was to crack jokes, try and get a laugh out of people, maybe even be the class clown.  Not always a bad thing, except when the conversations were serious ones, and she would start laughing just as people begin opening up.

She changed majors a few times in the next year, falling behind schedule and struggling to make it work at Cairn.  She ended up leaving Cairn to move home and attend a different university, mostly for financial reasons but also because she couldn’t quite figure out how she fit in at Cairn.

Now I’ll be honest, even if others won’t, and say that Lizzie wasn’t a student most professors loved having in class.  Her grades were average (on a good day), she could think in complex ways but too often defaulted to the easy way out, the joke, the distracting question, missing the opportunities to make the impact on others in a positive way.

Despite that, Cairn doesn’t like to give up on any student, so we figured out a way to get her back here, a place for her to stay, and challenged her to get serious about not just her academics, but, even more so, what impact she was going to have on others.

Lizzie is getting ready to graduate this semester.  I have no idea what her grades are; they are enough to pass.  I do know what her impact on other students has been and on our community in North Philly has been.  On campus she has worked, often without credit, to mobilize other students to take responsibility for the opportunities they have to impact others.  She led the movement to have an elected and active student government begin again.  She helped build an urban ministry alumni program that is involved in mentoring new students on campus, walking alongside them as they enter the complex urban systems.  You’ll find her just as often with the students people overlook as you will with the students easily identified as the leaders on campus.

Ask most of us who had her in our classes her first year if we thought she would be making such an impact on campus and in the city, and we would have said “it’s unlikely.”

Lizzie lives in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, attends One Hope church in Hunting Park and interns with Esperanza Health Center.  This past summer, she ran the volunteer section of Vocatio, helped start 8^th Day Coffee Shop, and spent her spare time helping others just make it through their days.  Lizzie has become known by many through the community for her tireless service, her humility and yes, her humour.

An Unlikely young lady, doing Unlikely things, in an Unlikely place.

Written by Dr. Crosscombe