Archives: Alumni Success Stories

Matthew Lanser ’05 stands at a small wooden table, a Bible open in front of him, as he teaches Nigerian villagers who have gathered beneath the generous shade of a tree to hear the gospel. He and his wife Laura ’05 currently serve in Nigeria with Christian Reformed World Missions (CRWM), the world missions agency of the Christian Reformed Church of North America.

The Lansers live in a fairly remote and undeveloped area and spend much of their time engaging with the people they live among and taking care of daily needs, such as getting food and water.

Matthew teaches at Warari Bible School, a school with approximately 30 students that trains functionally illiterate church leaders and their spouses in reading and writing. He also teaches a basic knowledge of the Bible and various ministry and vocational skills. The goal of this training is to help students either serve as pastors in the area churches or start new churches in areas where the Gospel has not yet been received.

Laura is busy with the couple’s newborn son Micah and their two-year-old son David. She has also taught at the school and, using her skills as a nurse, has trained several of the students and their spouses in basic medical care.

After graduating from Trinity with degrees in philosophy and theology, and nursing, respectively, Matthew and Laura lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Laura worked as an oncology nurse, and Matthew attended Calvin Theological Seminary, earning a Master of Divinity. But their shared interest in cross-cultural work was growing, as was their desire to serve the global church. After talking with recruiters from various missions agencies, the Lansers decided to work in Nigeria with CRWM.

“I think Trinity’s focus on developing a Christian worldview that reaches to all of life was good preparation for us to think in healthy ways about how we fit into the story of God’s work around the world,” said Matthew.

Kurt Schemper ’97, a former Trinity communication arts and theology major, received an Emmy for his work as a producer on Intervention, the A&E Television Network docuseries. The 61st Primetime Emmy Awards aired September 20.

Speaking then of his faith, Schemper recalled a quote by Frederick Buechner that a Trinity professor shared with him: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

“My deep gladness is Jesus,” said Schemper. “The entertainment industry is no different than any other place with lonely people searching for gladness.”

Harold Boyd ’10 grew up in the Roseland community on the south side of Chicago and began attending Roseland Christian Reformed Church around the age of 10. As a child, he enjoyed the fellowship he found at Roseland Christian Ministries (RCM) and remembers the year Joe Huizenga ’01, pastor of Roseland CRC, was an intern from Trinity.

Today Boyd, who also served as an intern as a Trinity student, works with Huizenga at RCM to bring the message of salvation to the community, as well as support services such as interim housing for homeless mothers and their children. Boyd recently began a newly created position as youth director and pastor, roles he fills with several years of experience of working with children and a heart for being a missionary to his community.

Soon after he began his work, Boyd was featured by CNN in a story about Mission Year and the low numbers of African Americans in the mission field. “We can be missionaries to our communities, and once we live a mission life there, then we can go out to other places,” he said.

Although Boyd’s time in Atlanta ended in July, he continues to work as a Mission Year alumni mentor with team members serving in Roseland for the next year.

At RCM, two of the youth offerings Boyd oversees include Transforming Minds, an after-school program, and Daughters of Zion, a program that helps girls develop their self esteem and reinforces moral messages. He hopes to develop a similar program for boys called Men of Honor but emphasized the great need for more long-term volunteers to serve the children.

Every morning, Crystal Williams ’11 walks along one of the Great Avenues of the World, passing lovely streetscapes, fine dining restaurants, high-end retail stores, and luxury hotels to reach her office at The Greater North Michigan Avenue Association (GNMAA), which represents more than 700 businesses interested in promoting Chicago’s Magnificent Mile as a world-class destination.

Williams, an administrative assistant and assistant to the program director, first began working with GNMAA during her Chicago Semester internship in the spring of 2011, her last semester as a Trinity business major. As a student, Williams was a recipient of the Academic Excellence, Diversity Leadership, and Dining Hall scholarships. She was a First Year Forum mentor and a student manager in the cafeteria for three years. That experience taught her management skills and led to an interest in event planning.

When her Chicago Semester ended, Williams’ work at the GNMAA did not. She was asked to stay through the summer and was later offered her current position.

“What I love most about my job is meeting with my committees, sitting around the table in our conference room, taking a blank canvas, and creating successful events,” said Williams. Some of her summer projects included planning and promotion for the Magnificent Red Carpet Boat Cruise and the ACCESS event (Admission to Chicago’s Coolest Experiences on the Summer Scene).

“I always think back to my Chicago Semester and my internship,” she said. “I am grateful and thankful to God that he blessed me with a spectacular job right out of college.”

While her friends in the United States were shopping at the mall or seeing a movie, she was sitting on a cold, tile floor with a group of orphans playing Go Fish beneath the small glow of a flashlight.

“It’s tough to not have your normal ‘American lifestyle,’” Storkel said of her most recent time abroad, “but God wanted me in Haiti for a purpose. I learned a lot and felt blessed because of my efforts there.”

“Abroad experiences teach you things about yourself that you never knew and really open your eyes to new cultures and the world around you,” she said.

After graduation, Storkel accepted a position as an intervention specialist in the London High School Special Education Department in Ohio where she taught for a year. But during that time, she felt God leading her to pursue her dream of serving globally and “being the person ‘going’ and ‘doing’ abroad.”

She took a one-year leave from her job and headed to Haiti where she taught English to young students and lived with 13 orphans who were taken in by a missionary after the hurricanes that hit Gonaives, Haiti, in the fall of 2008.

“I learned so much about God and about depending on him,” she said. “I also grew a deep respect for the Haitian people who, despite living in poverty and facing tragedy after tragedy, are truly joyful and love and serve God with their whole heart.”

After her year of service, she returned home to Ohio and to her teaching position at London, where she currently works.

Clifton Hurt ’09 followed the voice deeply rooted in his heart as he left home to help others overseas. Now a Peace Corps volunteer, Hurt is using his time to serve others in Mongolia.

“One day it hit me,” he said. “I am a young Christian with time and strength to serve. Why not serve people abroad?” His objective was to be a Christian—not by saying it, but by living it. Following months of prayer and conversations with friends from the Trinity community and his family, he joined the Corps.

Following graduation, Hurt arrived in Mongolia in early June 2010 for training and in August was officially sworn in as a volunteer serving for the next two years. He currently resides in Muren, Mongolia, where he is a primary teacher at Ereedwee, also known as Future 21 School. Because of his educational background, Hurt is able to teach in a classroom setting as well as train fellow teachers. He is one of nine foreign language teachers serving in the area and works with grades 4-11.

Hurt’s work extends far beyond his teaching as he engages with the community around him. Along with his fellow volunteers, he hosts the “English Corner” for local adults and interested students and offers private music lessons to a few of the local community members.

Billy Evans has spent the past several years working in Chicago Public Schools and recently accepted a position in which his main goal is to help develop and carry out strategies that bring peace and unity to a school located in an area of the city with a high rate of crime, gang activity, and poverty. His work is part of the school’s initiative to implement restorative practices that reduce the need for punitive discipline and encourage instruction and correction.

Preparation to answer the call: I was an admissions counselor at Trinity for two years. That background, in addition to my education, prepared me for my next position as a college counselor at Chicago Academy. In my current role, I engage on a deeper level of counseling with the students and work to get them on a path to college or a career. I accepted this position because I definitely felt like I could help bring about change and be a voice of reason and understanding in a chaotic place. I can’t openly share my faith, but the students know I’m a Christian. When I see a change in a student, I think, ‘This is why God called me, to shine the light of Jesus.

Aaron Tambrini ’97 is a special agent for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), part of the U.S. Department of State.

His work experience reads something like a character sketch of the protagonist in a political thriller. He has conducted criminal investigations into passport fraud, visa fraud, and terrorism; protected dignitaries, including the Secretary of State, the Dalai Lama, and various foreign ministers; and conducted embassy security management overseas.

This job requires intense training and the necessity of his family to move every few years and live everywhere from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Tunis, Tunisia. These were the locales of two of Tambrini’s assignments: liaison officer to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and assistant regional security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis.

Currently, Tambrini is in Arlington, Virginia, learning French in preparation for his next assignment as a regional security officer in Mauritania (western Africa), where he will move with his family to the capital city of Nouakchott and manage the Embassy’s security program as he did in Tunis.

Tambrini said that although he doesn’t recall a specific moment when he “woke up knowing” he was called to work in federal law enforcement, the former history major was interested in working as a special agent for the U.S. Secret Service and was first hired by Immigration to work at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. There he learned that his interest in passport and visa fraud would be a good match for the DSS’s main investigative function of protecting the integrity of the U.S. passport.

For students considering a similar field, Tambrini suggests taking advantage of the opportunities Trinity provides to gain hands-on experience through an internship and to be immersed in another culture through study abroad programs such as the Semester in Spain.