Graduating from The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI) prepared me to be ready in an instant. One evening I was at the Topeka Rescue Mission and they had to cancel chapel because the speaker cancelled. But I said, “I can do it.” I’d never preached before, but I had an exegetical paper that I wrote in my TUMI class. And so I preached from my paper. I was invited back and filled in for chapels on occasion. The cool part is that as the facilitators got folks through the TUMI program at the Rescue Mission, I was no longer needed. Now the students themselves could preach at a moment’s notice!
I taught the exegetical writing class for about a year and a half. I sensed the Lord calling me in a different direction, but I didn’t want to give that up—who would take my place? One day one of my former students who graduated came up to me and said, “I love you, but I want your job.” And I said, “Ok! Do you want to start in two weeks?”
So one of the graduates took over teaching that class, which freed me up to do anti-trafficking ministry with my husband.
While I was a student, I taught a high school girls Sunday School class. I decided that whatever I was learning at TUMI, they were going to learn too. So every week, my lessons were developed on what I had learned that week at TUMI.
All my life I had never felt like I belonged anywhere. After my first TUMI orientation I went home and told my husband, “I found my people!” It’s not just my classmates but all the people in TUMI and the direction it has taken us.