When Celeste Williams came to Calvary as a freshman, she had no idea where God would lead her or what she wanted to do for her career.

“I just knew that I would always want to be pursuing Christ,” Williams said, “and I knew Calvary would be the place that prepared me for a lifetime of that.”

As her love for children surfaced, she chose Elementary Education, even though the classroom wasn’t her favorite place to be. But in retrospect, she sees that, “Studying elementary education led to my dream job.”

She graduated with her Bachelor’s of Science in Elementary Education in Calvary’s most recent graduating class of 2019, and she has hit the ground running. She now works as the Education Director for Global FC, a local organization engaging and equipping youth from conflict and war zone areas of the world. The organization uses soccer opportunities, one-on-one tutoring, and mentorship to inspire and invest in children that are too often overlooked.

Williams found her way to Global FC through their partnership with Calvary. She had attended soccer games and interacted with the kids, and when Global FC started their education program. “This is somewhere that I can fit,” she realized. She plugged herself into the community, and keeps busy developing and organizing the ever-growing education program. As the program expands, Global FC finds new ways to reach the displaced communities of Kansas City.

“We have this new program,” she said, “that we’re figuring out called soccer literacy, which is for kids who have been in the states a year or less, so they don’t speak English much or read it. So we combine soccer drills with vocabulary and sentences to give them something a little different as they’re learning.” The kids Global FC reaches are almost universally enthralled with soccer, and it has proved a powerful tool for connecting with them.

Other programs are in the works for family literacy and high school graduates transitioning, so Williams stays busy recruiting volunteers, training tutors, and looking for partnerships for grants and other funding. But once work is done and the computer is closed, she’ll take any excuse to pay a home visit to one of their students. “Once I show up at a house, I end up being there for a couple hours usually.”

Despite spending more time on her computer than she ever expected to, Williams loves where she is and the opportunity she has. The community at Global FC has become invaluable to her.

She said, “[We] come and start to invest, not because we pity them and feel bad for them and think they have nothing, but because we believe that they have so much to give back to us.” Their capacity for unconditional love astounds her, and God is teaching her that, “It has to be a choice for me to allow God to love [these kids] through me…I can’t do everything… but I can be faithful to my role and allow God to work though me and through others.”

When Williams talks about her work and the kids, she can’t stop smiling. “I call my current job my dream job because it combined my love of children, families, culture, relationships, teaching, sports, missions, and even random things.” She points out how God has been at work, directing her steps here.

“The crazy thing is, this job did not exist when I started college; I was simply following God’s leading at each step along the way, and He graciously brought me here.”

With college behind her and exciting opportunities ahead of her, Williams has fallen in love with the mission field in her back yard. “I think a lot of life lessons that I learned here at Calvary are helping me… and there’s a part of me that’s 100% ready to go to another country and share about Jesus… But another part of me is like, this is the mission. Right here.”

SCHROON LAKE, NY – March 4, 2019 – Calvary University President, Dr. Christopher Cone, and Word of Life Bible Institute President, Roger Peace, announced a sweeping partnership between the two institutions, designed to strengthen both schools and provide significant benefits to students, staff and faculty, and alumni of both institutions. The partnership is crafted to provide a platform of collaboration and sharing between CU and WOLBI, as the schools move toward developing collaborative programs, shared access to campus facilities to enable both schools to broaden their reach, and cross-pollination and sharing of faculty.

The agreement includes significant tuition scholarships for Word of Life two-year program graduates who wish to continue their education through one of Calvary University’s four-year programs, and exchanges scholarships for staff and faculty of each school to attend the other. The agreement also benefits alumni of each school, allowing CU graduates scholarshipped access to Word of Life’s camp facilities, and WOLBI graduates scholarshipped access to educational programs at CU.

Peace and Cone formally announced the partnership to the student body of 370 while Cone had been teaching (the Book of Revelation) at the Word of Life campus in Schroon Lake. The announcement was met with excitement as students appreciated how the agreement would open doors for them to continue their preparation and schooling. Cone said he was “thankful to be working closely with such a likeminded and similarly-missioned group,” additionally noting that, “God continues to use Word of Life mightily in the lives of so many, and it will be a joy to see how God uses this partnership to improve how both schools serve and prepare students.” Peace, who will be speaking in the Spring at Calvary’s main campus in Kansas City, said, “the partnership builds on our commitment to prepare this generation in reaching their generation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” and “as we move forward together, this partnership provides students an opportunity to prepare for future in a significant way.

Calvary University is an independent private, regionally accredited and nationally accredited university focused on “preparing Christians to live and serve in the church and in the world according to the Biblical worldview. Calvary offers a broad range of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a doctoral program (Ph.D in Bible and Theology). Most of Calvary’s programs can be taken on campus or online.

Word of Life Bible Institute is fully accredited, and the mission is to educate each student within a rigorous academic and structured discipleship atmosphere, preparing him or her to live a life of maximum effectiveness for the Lord. The main campus is in Schroon Lake, NY, and teaching sites are located in Hudson, FL., and additional sites internationally.

For more information about the partnership, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

To inquire about admissions to Calvary University, contact [email protected] (Kansas City), [email protected] (Fort Morgan, CO). To inquire about admissions to Word of Life, contact [email protected].

For more information go to: https://www.calvary.edu/wolbi/.