Title: ELCA Campus Pastor Ministers with Northern Illinois University Community ELCA NEWS SERVICE
February 15, 2008
ELCA Campus Pastor Ministers with Northern Illinois University Community 08-016-MRC
CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Rev. Diane Schmidt Dardón, Lutheran campus pastor, Northern Illinois University (NIU), DeKalb, has been ministering with families and friends of students wounded from a shooting on the NIU campus Feb. 14 that left five students dead plus the gunman.
Dardón, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), told the ELCA News Service that she spent the evening and early morning at Kishwaukee Community Hospital, DeKalb, where she stood with families as they identified the bodies of students killed.
The Lutheran Campus Ministry Center is "kitty-corner to the building where the shooting took place," said Dardón. The center will be open around the clock "for those who are weary and restless," she said.
Outside of the center are six large crosses, draped in red and purple with the message, "We walk in hope, we pray for healing." As students and others stop to view the crosses, they are invited to write a message "to express their grief," Dardón said. Those who stop by the crosses are also invited to visit the Lutheran Campus Ministry Center everyday at 6:30 p.m. for "remembrance prayers," she said. "The crosses have become a huge witness to this community."
The Lutheran Campus Ministry Center held prayer vigils Feb. 14 at 10 p.m. and midnight. Soon after the shooting Dardón said she called the center to organize a candlelight vigil, and "students there immediately took action. From that one phone call two prayer vigils were organized. Our church is so amazingly blessed by our young leaders," she said.
The Rev. Gary M. Wollersheim, bishop, ELCA Northern Illinois Synod, Rockford, attended a candlelight vigil. - - -
Information about the ELCA Northern Illinois Synod is at http://www.nisynod.org/lcm on the Web.
For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org http://www.elca.org/news ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog