“I’m getting paid to do this!” is a thought often found running through my mind. It’s a thought laced with joy and astonishment that my “work” as Director of the Friends Leadership Program (FLP) is spending time with young adults seeking a better understanding of Christ’s call on their lives.
It often comes after a long conversation over coffee with a Friends student who is wrestling with what it means to follow Christ into a particular major, or after I’ve spent an hour with a group of Friends students talking about the church.
It’s a thought I think you’ll better understand after you meet one of the Friends students currently attending Fox: Katie Morse.
Katie is in her sophomore year at George Fox, a place she has described as having a “high concentration of amazing people.” She comes from a family of Bruins—her mother and father, Ellen and Stan, as well as her brother and sister, Daniel and Juli, are all alumni. Yet choosing to attend Fox was not an easy decision for Katie. The cost of tuition and being away from her home in Idaho were two barriers she faced in the decision process.
It was, as Katie said, one of the many hard decisions she has had to make as a student at George Fox. Ultimately, after choosing to attend Fox, Katie was able to articulate that, “Fox has provided a safe place for me, a place where I am challenged to embrace where God has put me, and to live into it.”
In many ways Katie’s George Fox experience has presented many great challenges:
- Katie is an engineering major, one of only 2 women in her class of 35
- Katie is a member of the women’s basketball team, one of the top basketball teams in the country
- Katie is a member of the first cohort of Friends Leadership Program students
Reflecting on what she has learned in the past two years at George Fox, Katie was able to say, “The hard parts of growing up have been made easier by the people at Fox who have walked with me, cried with me, and allowed me to experience God’s faithfulness.”
Article by Jamie Johnson, director of the Friends Leadership Program
I was privileged to have been Katie’s Pastor from the time of her birth until we moved to Caldwell 10 years ago. Even then we kept in close contact with her. She has always been an amazing girl. We have enjoyed watching her grow up and mature as a beautiful wonderful Christian young lady.