Christian Review Magazine Issue 3 - March 2015 | Page 37

(as I would soon come to discover)
had made judgments about all of
western civilization from the films
they’d seen. I had one student ask
me if life in America was like
American Pie, an absolutely
horrendous film about four
teenage boys who enter a pact to
lose their virginity by prom night.
They were all shocked to discover
that I didn’t drink, smoke or
believe in having sex outside of
marriage. They asked me
repeatedly, “Are you sure you’re
an American?”

secretly behind the scenes
directing my decisions in ways I
could not see. While at Asbury
University, I developed a passion
for using the medium of film to
communicate the gospel and I was
given many helpful tools and
opportunities along the way.

It was then that I realized how
powerful movies can be.
Suddenly, it dawned on me that if
someone became a filmmaker
who told stories that point people
to Jesus, they could be a
missionary to the entire world.
Movies go places people cannot.
Movies can go into locked
countries with closed doors, into
prisons and into the homes of
presidents and world leaders. All
of a sudden, I had a total new
appreciation for filmmaking. But I
had no idea what God had
planned.

One of those opportunities led
me to Beijing, China to work as a
media liaison at the 2008 Summer
Olympics. While I was there, I
worked with several Chinese
students who loved western films.
They had seen them all and sadly

The very next summer, I had just
graduated from Asbury and was
spending a month doing mission
work in Israel. At this point, I was
still set on foreign missions in the
traditional sense. I was drawn to
the idea of travel and somehow

Kendra and Jeremy with Rachel Eggleston (Hallie in Summer Snow)
Photo: Canada Burkhalter

had done very well. But what
really surprised me was how my
stories affected those who read
them. I started to understand the
power of story telling to move an
audience and I thought, “Why not
move them toward Christ?”
By the time I started college, I
was still searching for direction. I
enrolled at a school five minutes
from my home and picked the
major of media communications
based on my brother’s
recommendation that the classes
would be “fun.” But God was

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