Wesley Foundation aids Tech students


Campus ministry offers
place to stay, pray after
April 16 shooting spree

United Methodist News Service
The Virginia Tech Wesley Foundation offered a safe haven for students immediately after the deadly April 16 shooting spree on the Blackburg campus.
The Wesley Foundation became a spiritual hub for grief and prayer as the campus community began to come to grips with the deaths of 33 people.
“It has been helpful to come here and talk about this together,” said Amanda Rader, a senior civil engineering major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “It is starting to set in how real this is.”
Rader, a member of Mount Olive UMC in nearby Newport, Va., lost a friend in the April 16 shooting.
“I went to high school with one of the students who was killed and actually had a class with him this semester,” she said, softly crying.
Thirty-three people were dead and 15 wounded in the wake of the massacre that ended when the lone gunman killed himself.
The Rev. Glenn Tyndall, United Methodist campus minister at Virginia Tech, said he opened the doors to the Wesley Foundation Center immediately after the shootings so students would have a “warm, comfortable, safe” place.
Visitors shared a prayer service, and about a dozen spent the night in the building, Tyndall said.
“It is becoming more personal with every hour,” Tyndall said, as the names of the dead were being released April 17. None of the students who attend the Wesley Foundation were hurt, but a handful lost close friends.
“That not only affects those individual students but affects those of us who are their friends and co-workers because it personalizes it for all of us,” Tyndall said.
Prayers, encouragement and offers of help were arriving from across the United States to the Wesley Foundation offices. Tyndall said he had heard from other campus ministers that “they were praying for our campus and having services for us.”
A worship service previously planned for April 22 to celebrate Virginia Tech Student Day took on a different tone, said Bishop Charlene Kammerer of the Virginia Conference. She planned to attend the service at Blacksburg UMC, three blocks from the campus.
The bishop asked for prayers for those in ministry on the Virginia Tech campus, including Tyndall.
“They are all tired, but energized by the work before them,” she said. “And they are thankful for the support and prayers they are receiving.”
Tyndall said students and campus staff need prayers more than anything else right now.
Rader said, “It is going to be tough to come back from this.” She said fellowship and community are more important than ever to her and fellow students.
“We need the support of each other and ... just somebody to lean on everyday,” she said.