This is the sixth in a series of blogs written by alumni of the Student.Go program.  This year Student.Go is celebrating 10 years of providing summer and semester missions service opportunities for college and graduate students in locations all over the world.

This blog is written by written by Hannah Stuart who served through Student.Go at Touching Miami With Love (TML) in Miami, FL during the summers of 2010 and 2011.

My two summers at TML have been completely life changing.  I’m so thankful God placed me there.  God took me from my small hometown in the north Georgia mountains and put me somewhere that I was so completely out of my element, “beyond my comfort zone” (as we say at Student. Go) and used it to transform my life. 

 Before going to TML I had always felt bad for folks who lived in urban poverty but I had never really done all that much about it.   I had volunteered here and there but it wasn’t until my first summer at TML that I was able to really witness what it means for someone to live everyday in that kind of environment.  What I learned was that “people are people are people” and God loves them all.  It’s so easy for us to label folks as homeless, poor, marginalized, etc.   I realized I was placing people in these categories in my own mind and by putting these labels on them, I was making them almost less than human and just seeing them as whatever label I had given them.  Working at TML, God taught me that we are called to love, before all else, and to love without labels or categories.  Each person is wonderfully and beautifully made and that’s something that I knew with my head but never really believed with my heart until serving in Miami.  

 Not only did God put me in a place where I fell in love with the people I was there to serve, but He gave me the wonderful blessing of amazing folks to serve beside.  The relationships and bonds I have developed in Miami and through TML and Student.Go are some of the most meaningful and genuine relationships in my life—these friendships are ones that I truly treasure.  I wish I could more fully describe just how wonderfully God has used  TML/Student.Go in my life, but I truly don’t know that words can do it justice.  I’m just so very thankful that God led me there and changed my whole world with it.

Hannah Stuart and friend at TML