Written by Kylie Akins
Harding recently announced its first two Yingling Endowed Scholarship recipients, freshmen Addison Keele and Lacey Bates. The Yingling Scholars will be selected annually and receive $10,000 per year for the next four years for remaining a Bible major pursuing an active involvement in a ministry career.
Keele is a missions major from Broken Arrow, Okla., with plans to travel to Ukraine when he graduates to become involved with a community through the local church. He also has a passion for working with children and hopes to volunteer at an orphanage.
When he was told he had been selected for this scholarship, he said he nearly hit the shelves above his head.
“I don’t know how other people see me or what they thought was exceptional,” Keele said. “But I hope it has something to do with my desire toencourage real change in people’s lives.”
The most important function of this scholarship to Keele was the time he could save between graduating from college and working with a church.
“When a lot of debt is stacked up against you, it impedes the process of getting to your mission field,” Keele said. “I don’t have to worry about that as much because of the Yingling Scholarship, since it eliminates a lot of that debt.”
Bates is a youth and family Bible major originally from Australia, now a three-year resident of Atlanta, and she said she is eager to become involved in the lives of teens and their personal relationships with God. Bates said she felt overwhelmed and blessed to receive a scholarship of this amount.
“I knew I couldn’t afford Harding, but I couldn’t deny that this was where I needed to be,” Bates said. “He used the Yingling family to bless me immeasurably more than I could have imagined. I hope I was chosen because they saw in methe heart of a servant, a heart that belongs to God.I will continue to work hard over the next four years, but there is no denyingthere is a peace of mind that comes easier knowing I have this amazing scholarship.”
Yingling was a farmer who came to Harding from 1937 to 1938 immediately after graduating from high school. He attended for only one year due to the high cost of an education he felt was not practical for his farming career. Before his death, Yingling set up funds of $2.1 million to be used for Bible major scholarships specifically because he felt so strongly about ministry.
“Two things he had always had a passion for was, first, for the Church of Christ and preaching the gospel, and second, Harding,” Yingling’s cousin Dewitt Yingling said. “
Yingling and his wife, Eloise, were childless, and he felt he should use the wealth they had accumulated to leave a legacy.
“He didn’t have any children,” Dewitt said. “And that’s why it was important to him that his gift would go to help these students at Harding.”
To Yingling, a legacy was not about a building with his name engraved onto the outside.
“The idea he had of the scholarship was more far-reaching than naming a building because the students’ lives can mean so much more than any kind of building could ever mean,” Dewitt said.
The recipients applied for the scholarship and were put through an interview process until the final two were selected. Students were selected on the basis of scholarship, need and commitment to and potential for ministry. Recipients must fulfill certain criteria such as maintaining a 3.00 GPA, being involved in a local church and maintaining an exemplary conduct and academic integrity record.
Each year, the Yingling Scholarship program plans to add two students until they eventually have eight recipients at once, two in each year classification. The scholarship is distributed in $5,000 increments per semester for eight semesters
A luncheon for the recipients of the $10,000 scholarships and also those who received $5,000 scholarships from the Yingling Endowment Scholarship program will be held Tuesday, Nov. 3.
