First-year Sydney Jean-Simon goes for a drive with her friends to the ocean for a day in Marblehead, Mass., in January. She said she is passionate about her faith, family and friends.
Photos Courtesy of Sydney Jean-Simon
First-year Integrated Marketing and Communication major Sydney Jean-Simon is from Boston, but she found a community remotely in Malibu through the International Churches of Christ.
Jean-Simon said she went on a service trip to Hawai’i during her senior year of high school with a Churches of Christ group, which introduced her to students she would be going to school with at Pepperdine.
“It’s kind of cool to see people that I knew years prior to going to Pepperdine and seeing them be in the same campus ministry as me and also being able to just meet new people,” Jean-Simon said. “I do love that.”
On her service trip to Hawai’i, Jean-Simon said they were able to evangelize on the University of Hawaii campus. Her group cleaned off paths at some of the sacred locations, worked with kids at homeless shelters and supplied food and water. The trip indirectly led her to Pepperdine because she met a good friend, Megan Elias, who met and introduced Simon to someone attending Pepperdine on the trip.
“I probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my connections with the church,” Jean-Simon said.
Jean-Simon smiles in Honolulu on her last full day of her Hawai'i service trip in July 2019. She said she attended multiple summer camps and was active in her church's teen ministry, but her biggest involvements with the church were serving in Texas and Hawai'i.
Jean-Simon participated in another service trip in 2018 to Dallas, where she said she worked at a center for kids who lived in unstable households and was assigned a mentee to mentor for two weeks.
“It’s fulfilling and also it’s just nice to be able to get to know people especially on the trips. I do like volunteering,” Jean-Simon said.
Jean-Simon visits the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in February 2020. She said she and her dad visited Los Angeles and were able to tour Pepperdine before the pandemic shut everything down.
Jean-Simon is involved with Alpha Omega Campus Ministry and formed a group of first-year friends from Alpha Omega across the country — one is from New York, another is from Maryland and one is from Colorado. She and her group of friends visited Malibu over Easter for Spring Recess.
“I am Christian and so being able to grow in my relationship with God as I am growing in my friendships with them is awesome,” Jean-Simon said.
Everything aligned perfectly for Jean-Simon to be able to attend Pepperdine, she said. She applied to the University after the service trip to Hawai’i, and then came out to Los Angeles for her senior gift — a trip with her father for graduation — right before COVID-19 and was able to tour campus.
“I definitely can feel that sense of community with the professors and the students,” Jean-Simon said. “And also just everything else lining up financially, and for my church too, just having the great campus ministry, it all kind of lined up.”
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Tags: Alpha Omega Campus Ministry campus tours Church of Christ. Fresh Faces Hawaii Life and Arts Lindsay Mase sydney jean-simon travel
April 14, 2021 at 11:08AM
https://pepperdine-graphic.com/fresh-faces-faithful-student-finds-community-through-church-family/
Fresh Faces: Faithful Student Finds Community through Church Family ‹ Pepperdine Graphic - Graphic
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