November 4, 2002

Columbine survivor encourages Dallas Baptist University students to be on mission
___DALLAS--Students at Dallas Baptist University were encouraged to life-changing participation in ministry by a survivor of the Columbine High School shooting.
___Crystal Woodman, a survivor of the 1999 massacre, spoke in chapel services at DBU Oct. 28 to promote participation in the annual Operation Christmas Child ministry sponsored by Samaritan's Purse.
___Her experience at Columbine transformed her life into an instrument for spreading God's love, she said.
___Woodman was among the many students in the library at Columbine that fateful spring day. Along with other students, she hid under the tables in the library when the two student gunmen entered.
___She witnessed the murder of fellow classmate Cassie Bernall, after one of the gunmen reportedly asked Bernall if she believed in God. Woodman said the two gunmen ran out of ammunition as they approached her own hiding place.
___After the incident, she wondered what she would have said if the gunmen had put a gun to her head and asked her if she believed in God.
___These events challenged Woodman to evaluate her own relationship with God. She had only recently returned to church, and she felt she was not living a life pleasing to God.
___Subsequently, she has dedicated her time to telling her story and taking God's love to a hurting world. She volunteers with Samaritan's Purse.
___Her first mission trip with Samaritan's Purse took her to war-torn Kosovo in December 1999. There she helped distribute thousands of gift-filled shoeboxes and met a young girl her own age named Donika.
___Woodman said she felt an instant bond with the girl. Donika's family had been ravaged by the recent war, and her father had been killed. Woodman spent a week with Donika and her family, then visited the family again last year. Donika and her family have since become believers in Jesus Christ.
___Woodman also has worked in El Salvador rebuilding homes after an earthquake, in Mozambique organizing Christian training programs for women and children displaced by floods, and in Honduras developing a children's camp and installing water filters in homes.
___"My experience at Columbine does not define who I am. It's only a portion of who I am and how God has given me more boldness to proclaim him," Woodman told DBU students.
___However, she believes God used the events at Columbine to refine her and to call her to a life of ministry.
___She asked the students to consider how they might contribute to God's work right now. She challenged students to contribute to Operation Christmas Child as a small gift to God.
___"You don't have to wait until you are out of college to make a difference," she declared.

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