Thank you, Noni Strand.

This fund’s purpose is to generate a thank-you gift to honor the Rev. Noni Strand as her long service as campus pastor at Bethany College comes to an end.

Noni has touched thousands of lives. She has preached and taught at chapel and in the classroom. She has shepherded students through rough times and joyful times and just plain old daily life times. She has gardened and painted and knitted and visited and sat on committees and endured meetings. She has baptized. She has traveled many miles to attend funerals. She has officiated at weddings, including my own. She is a source of optimism and comfort and encouragement — even during her own hard times, even in the face of a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The scope of this gift is two-fold. This fund ends Nov. 19. At that time, one portion of the proceeds will be designated for Noni herself to use personally as she wishes. The second portion will be designated as a tax-deductible gift to Bethany College in Noni’s honor, for a fund to be used as Noni specifies. (If you wish to donate directly to Bethany to contribute to this fund, please contact the advancement office.)

Thanks be to God for the ways he has put Noni to work among us! And thanks be to you for your gifts to honor her work.

“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:16-17).