Written by Kylie Akins
With more than 150 people huddled around him, junior Bruce McMullen stepped down into the icy water of the McInteer fountain.The snow that fell earlier in the day, lining the edge of the fountain, failed to postpone the ceremony.With the temperature hovering at freezing, the water was far from comfortable. But that day, Thursday, Jan. 20, was the day McMullen, a golf player and Sub T-16 president, was to be baptized, and nothing was getting in his way.McMullen’s journey began in his hometown of Cape Town, South Africa, where he decided to seek an education better than the one he would receive at the local university. With golf skills to offer, he contacted recruiters in the U.S. in search of a scholarship that would take him overseas.Harding’s first-year men’s golf coach, Dustin Howell, responded to McMullen, and without much understanding of what “religious” meant in the context of a university, McMullen began his first semester in the fall of 2008 with two bags and a golf scholarship.”Harding was nothing like what I was expecting at all,” McMullen said.”I didn’t want anything to do with the pressures in terms of Christianity.”After a difficult freshman year, McMullen considered transferring; but as inexplicable as he said his choice was to attend Harding, his firm decision to stay was even harder to describe. It was during his sophomore year that he was assigned a project in Life of Christ in which he was required to interview 10 of his Christian friends.”You could put a thread through all of the answers,” McMullen said. “I thought, ‘There’s something real here.'”After this experience, McMullen began an intense search for answers, studying and talking with peers, professors and preachers, during which three words changed him.”When I started asking questions,alotofthetime people said to me, ‘Hey, I don’tevenknow,andthat’s the point. We study together and talk about it,'” McMullen said. “I think the phrase ‘I don’t know’changed my life. It made me feel exactly like everyone else here.”This past summer when he returned to South Africa, a country with a diverse mix of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity, he found himself changed. Upon returning to school, he pored over questions and studied with his friends. By Christmas break, he was devoting much of his time to reading and watching religious videos. On the plane ride back to Searcy three weeks ago, he realized he wanted to be baptized.The McInteer fountain had special meaning to McMullen, as Harding held the people who changed him.”I felt like what Harding has done for me and Harding people have done for me, I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else,” McMullen said. “Now, whenever I walk past it and whenever I visit Harding again, I can walk past there and just close my eyes and just picture everyone that was around there supporting me and let the whole ceremony go through my head. That’s awesome. I can walk past there every day and experience that and get that feeling.”After his baptism, an onslaught of e-mails filled McMullen’s inbox from people from all over the world who had read his story on Facebook and were encouraged.”Receiving all those e-mails just reassured me that it’s the best thing that I have done,” McMullen said. “The Christian family is not just what I might share with a few friends here or about Harding, but it’s bigger than that and we can all affect and change people’s lives.”Howell said he enjoyed being able to watch and participate in McMullen’s intense search and finally see it come to fruition.”He’s been searching for a while,” Howell said. “I could not be happier with his decision.”With the assistance of Little Rock preacher Stuart Cash of Pleasant Valley Church of Christ, McMullen was submerged into the frigid water during a short break in the snowy weather and rose to see his friends surrounding him.”I felt very supported with all the people there that meant so much to me,” McMullen said. “Sure, it was cold; I’m not going to lie. But the reason that I was there was bigger than me just being cold.”
