Date: 4/20/2017

Title: Pi Kappa Phi Hosts Core Member Gathering

This year, we have entered into a partnership with Pi Kappa Phi - Iowa State (Alpha Omicron) and last night marked the inaugural core member gathering as hosted by the fraternity. Pi Kappa Phi's National Philanthropy platform is "Building leaders of tomorrow by serving people with disabilities today." The fraternity will be hosting quarterly gatherings for our core members and last night's event was an absolute success! Everyone seemed to make a new friend. We had hot dogs, chips, pasta salad, and fruit salad. The fraternity also grilled us delicious burgers! Before dinner, we enjoyed coloring pictures and the fraternity got to meet the core members. We all dined together and afterwards, everyone visited, played corn hole and basketball outside. The fraternity members did an amazing job interacting with our core members.

Supervisor, Nikki Mesenbrink, who organized the event for Friendship Ark, presented the following devotion and prayer before dinner:

Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

Strangers can become best friends in a matter of hours. So, be ready for unexpected conversations with the amazing souls that have come together tonight. We are all very different, but have so much in common. We are all God’s children, we are all part of the Ames community, we are all neighbors, we are all new friends. Laugh, eat, and love thy neighbor. Please join us in prayer:

“Lord, bless the food before us,
bless the neighbors beside us,
bless the love between us. Amen”