With 42 classes, more than 100 internships, and 14 trips—both domestic and international—Winterim 2019 was a great success.

 

Students enjoyed studying subjects like aviation, sign language, real estate, lifestyle photography, cooking, car mechanics, and film making on our West Chicago campus . . . while other students explored cultures and cities of the world . . . and still others interned at hospitals, orphanages, schools, local businesses, and animal shelters. Students will be processing and sharing how Winterim 2019 impacted their lives for weeks and months to come.

Since the program began in 1991, students have consistently pointed to Winterim as a definitive time in their life when they were exposed to something that changed the course of their future. Lydia Rubenic ’15 is one of those students.

While Lydia was a Junior and Senior at Wheaton Academy, she was involved in many co-curricular activities: choir, orchestra, and theater. She even played the lead role in the Academy Theater production of Mary Poppins! But it was an opportunity to travel to Guatemala and see the impact of medical missionaries that changed her life forever.

Lydia was so inspired and moved by these opportunities that she decided to change her college plans and take on a double major, pursuing a pre-med degree.

This past year, Lydia contacted the Independent Missionary Network (IMN), the ministry that Wheaton Academy works through in Guatemala, to arrange a trip for herself to go and serve alongside the medical missionaries in Guatemala. This trip paved the way for Lydia to return to Guatemala with 30 of her undergraduate pre-med peers from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lydia is considering taking a gap year between her junior and senior years of college to devote her time to a year-long missions program with IMN. She will spend her time her time moving to different locations throughout Guatemala using her gifts to show the love of Jesus to people needing medical attention throughout the country.

This opportunity all started with a seed planted in the heart of a high school junior during a Winterim trip, and it’s still in the process of bearing fruit!

Thank you to all of the students, teachers, parents, and members of our local and global community who help to make Winterim experiences life-changing.

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