Fall Quarter Recap (a First-Year’s POV)

By Ella Chuang

Hi there! I’m Ella, and I’m an A2F freshman! It’s my first year at UW and I’m planning to study Business Administration (pray for my application next spring!). I moved up to rainy Seattle from my sunny home in Los Angeles, California, but I couldn’t be more glad to be here. Fun fact about me: I am a black belt in Tae Kwon Do but cannot do the splits to save my life.

I certainly did not know what to expect entering my first quarter of college during an international pandemic. I had a lot of worries— worries about making friends, succeeding in class, and growing in my faith in a time where it seems like nothing is going right. Connecting with an on-campus fellowship was an early goal of mine when entering college and I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to find a group I could fit in with during a time where meeting new people is difficult and interactions are limited to a computer screen. But, I was lucky enough to sign-up for Husky Connect and got plugged into A2F almost immediately! I was swept into the awesome community that is Acts2Fellowship and I think I have really found “my people.”

So, here’s a recap of Fall Quarter 2020 from a first-year student’s perspective:

Fall Dawg Daze

Angelina's Summer LIFT Designs FINAL.jpg

A2F’s Fall Dawg Daze events started off with the Virtual Escape Room. I personally am a huge escape room enthusiast (my family and I have done over 80 escape rooms!) and I can honestly say that I enjoyed this creative (and COVID-safe) introduction to A2F and UW! The puzzles were relevant to a new UW student and challenging enough to keep it fun! The event was so well-run, I was excited to check out A2F’s Fellowship Night a few days later. Fellowship Night was a great intro to A2F and was merely a glimpse into the community I would find myself immersed in a few months later. We played games, “met” a bunch of current A2F members and prospective members alike, and had some nice worship time to wrap it all up. Overall, virtual Fall Dawg Daze was my first impression of A2F and it definitely hyped me up for the rest of the quarter.

RISE 2020

Our representative for the National Dino Tournament, Captain Raptor

My first college retreat! Though it was virtual, RISE 2020 was truly an unforgettable experience. RISE was in early October, which was within my first couple weeks of living in Seattle. It was intimidating attending a college retreat with a bunch of people I barely knew and being thrown into a massive group of college fellowships from across the country. However, my nervousness disappeared as people from A2F reached out to me— whether it was my senior mentor checking in on me or one of the staff mentors personally dropping off my retreat package (a RISE t-shirt, notebook, pin, and stickers!!). When I actually started watching the retreat I realized just how many people were logged on and watching the same video I was. It was slightly overwhelming but I chalked it up to being the tiny freshman in the sea of veteran college students. The longer I watched, however, the more I understood the power of this large of a gathering of college Christians. If we had been in person, I’m sure the vibe would’ve been different but seeing this many people “gather” despite the bad situation we all found ourselves in was inspiring and comforting. RISE’s program itself was also surprisingly engaging for a virtual webinar. The games and skits— including one suspenseful Dino Games tournament with people in blow-up dinosaur costumes represented each region of the country for us to cheer on— were entertaining and felt interactive even if I was just watching from my lofted bed in my dorm room hundreds of miles away from where they were filming. When it came to splitting up to watch different workshops, being virtual was actually an advantage because I could re-watch the recordings of speakers I had missed later on. The plenaries, testimonies, and worship were all incredibly moving (even if at the time I was completely stationary).

My cardboard cutout dog was iconic enough to get me onto the bloopers reel!

To top it all off, I got to reconnect with an old upperclassman of mine from high school. I made the bloopers reel for the giant all-ministry dance video because the cardboard cut-out of my dog (lovingly gifted to me by my parents) made an appearance despite me using a Zoom background when we filmed. This girl I served with in our high school’s Christian club (she attends UC Santa Barbara now) texted me that she saw me in the bloopers reel and we had a catch-up session about joining the same campus fellowship at different colleges. RISE brought me closer to the A2F family I would spend a lot of time with for the rest of the quarter as well as strengthened bonds I had formed while in high school. God really does have a funny way of guiding us towards certain decisions, and I’m glad one of mine was joining A2F.

Thanksgiving Celebration

Leading up to TC, I wasn’t sure of what to expect. Would it be like RISE, with worship, skits, and plenaries? Or would it be something entirely different? All I knew was that the seniors had reassured me that it was going to be fun to watch and something I wouldn’t want to miss out on.

Much like RISE, TC had fun games, interesting plenaries, and skits. However, each group had picked a certain song from Les Miserables and had made an A2F parody music video. Through different renditions about A2F via Zoom to “Bring Them Home” and one grand finale of all the participating A2F members singing “Do You Hear [A2F] Sing” we saw people of all ages joining together to worship God in a unique and entertaining way. This is in addition to an unexpected performance of Skillet’s rock anthem “Feel Invincible” by the seniors that upped their “Cool Level” by 1000 in my opinion.

Life Groups and Course 101

One of the highlights of my week has been meeting with my Life Group on Tuesday nights and going through Course 101. I grew up in the church but going through Course is helping me strengthen my faith and understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Any doubts that I have/had are being cleared up one-by-one in a logical walkthrough of different Christian beliefs and why they hold truth. Even if I were a skeptical atheist, I think I would understand the Course content and really ponder the existence of God. The actual online interface is super visually pleasing and makes going through what would usually be boring reading passages much more engaging. Getting to go through the content and discuss it with the other girls in my Life Group is an added bonus. Seeing familiar faces and being able to catch up, share prayer requests, and just be there for each other is why I look forward to Tuesday nights.

Super fun other things

Frosh/Senior Sis LifeGroup at Amazon Everest in Bellevue for a study session!

I don’t have very many friends outside of my roommate and the people I have met through A2F, so any chance I get to have face-to-face interaction is always an opportunity I jump on, whether that’s getting boba with my Life Group, eating dinner together before Course, or a study session at Amazon Everest’s rooftop lounge. Even the virtual hangouts like our study sessions with the Bros’ Life Group are always a blast (despite the mentors’ insistence that we do 5-minute YouTube workouts as study breaks).

There’s never a dull moment in Acts2Fellowship and I’m so blessed that God led me to a group of amazing people that I can “do life” with!