On Wednesday, April 15, hundreds participated in Bisons for Christ, the annual day of service that invites students to go “beyond” Harding to serve the community.

The projects ranged from visiting with the elderly and baking cookies to cleaning up yards and working on housing projects to running athletic programs for kids.

The Rock House, a ministry of College Church of Christ, sponsors the event. Alumni coordinator Liz Howell helps to organize the event.

“The goal for us is to introduce people to serving,” Howell said. “Not for just a day but to develop a lifetime of serving.”

Junior Easton Cook was part of a group of friends that helped at Harding Place, led by freshman Madison Vanderheiden. They helped with simple tasks such as hanging curtains and organizing shelves: tasks that were too big of a strain for the elderly who live there.

The difficulty of the work varied from project to project, but students remembered that no matter how they helped it made an impact.

“I saw some of the guys who came in covered in green grass; they were dirty from head to toe,” Cook said. “And I thought to myself, ‘I haven’t done as much as I should have,’ but then I thought ‘maybe I did, maybe just sitting and listening was exactly what I was supposed to be doing.’ Whatever we do, both great or small, it matters.”

Sophomore Luke Dalton, who is in Sigma Nu Epsilon, was part of a project that his club started last year where members from the club go to Bethel Grove Church of Christ in Paragould, Ark. and clean up the property. Because of Bisons for Christ, the group now visits the church every third Sunday.

“It was something we really enjoyed doing last year and really connected with the people there,” Dalton said.

This year, students completed more than 130 projects.