Christmas cheer for all: cookies, hot cider, stories, songs & games.

Dr. Deb Brubaker’s Songleading class will lead the community in a service of scripture and song reflecting on the coming of the Christ Child.

This convocation presents the best true life stories from students in fall Academic Voice classes.

Sarah Adams is a long-time Middle East peace worker with Mennonite Central Committee.

Biblical Storytelling — from an ASL perspective

Carina Zehr and Lauren Treiber are organizers for the Cambodia SSTers, who will tell stories about their experience.

Ann Lehman, from the Center for Community Justice, and Gretchen Lund, Goshen city judge, will introduce the Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP). The first VORP program in the U.S. was begun in Elkhart by Goshen College alumnus Howard Zehr in 1978.A Core Values Institute event

Kate Stoltzfus & Kolton Nay are organizing this convocation, which will tell stories from the Spring 2013 Peru SST unit.

To celebrate Hispanic Heritage month, Latino students will describe many streams of Hispanic heritage that make up their own families.

Service Inquiry students will share stories and reflections out of their summer Service Inquiry assignments.

Bishop Rhoades is the Roman Catholic bishop for the Fort Wayne and South Bend areas in Indiana. He will speak on Compassionate Peacemaking.

Misty Dillon, MSW, LCSW, SCAMS, works through Dillon Counseling, Inc. in Elkhart.

Andi & Al are a husband-wife team from Chicago. They work with Emmaus Ministries which reaches out to men in prostitution on the streets of Chicago. Through nightly Outreach teams and a daytime Ministry Center, Emmaus staff and volunteers build relationships of trust with these men, working together to help them get off the streets and cultivate a life-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. “Stories from the Streets” tells the stories of some of these men through dramatic monologue and music.

Steve Thomas is a pastor who is passionate about powerful peacemaking. He initiated the Peacemakers Martial Arts program, based in Goshen, that trains both children and adults to carry out effective responses to personal violence. Thomas will also lead a safety workshop for female students on Wednesday and a “warrior” workshop for male students on Tuesday. Both workshops will emphasize using power to defuse violence and will include some martial arts basics.

In this special annual Homecoming Convocation to launch Homecoming Weekend, alumni award winners will be recognized and several will speak.

The Goshen College campus and Rich Meyer’s farm near Benton, southeast of Goshen, both sit on land that was once tended by members of the Potawatomi Indian nation. George Godfrey and Meyer will share the podium in today’s convocation. Godfrey is the former vice president for academic affairs at Haskell Indian nations university in Lawrence Kansas, and a historian of the Citizen Potawatomi band, now living in Athens, Illinois. Both Meyer and Godfrey participated in the Trail of Death Re- enactment this year, which commemorates the removal of the Potawatomi from Indiana in 1838. See related link below. What can emerge through compassionate peacemaking on the part of both Indians and whites today?

Each summer, several Goshen College students complete a ministry inquiry internship with a congregation somewhere in the U.S. What did the 2013 group experience and what did they learn?