GCU Today April Digital Issue 2018

GCU MAGAZ I NE • 9 A s their car turned onto Camelback Road toward Grand Canyon University on that fateful day in 2014, Bethany Egeler and her parents quickly formed strong opinions about the campus they were about to visit for the first time. Strongly opposite opinions. Her parents were thinking about the family’s recent visit to another Christian university, one in far more bucolic surroundings, with rolling hills and a postcard-perfect town nearby. Her father’s overwhelming thought about GCU, he told her later, was, “There’s no way she’s going to like this place. It’s so sketchy around here. This place stands no chance.” But Bethany felt overwhelmed in a vastly different way. “I remember seeing the freeway sign for Bethany Home Road (one mile north of GCU) and I thought, ‘You know, that sounds about right for some reason – Bethany’s home,’” she said. “I didn’t feel scared or pushed away or anything. It made me feel at home. I was like, ‘These people need somebody to help change their lives. They need a chance to change their futures.’ ” Then she got a look at the campus. She went to a Chapel service, at which the speaker, Terry Crist, talked about “warrior women.” “My parents just kept looking at me, and I was like, ‘Gosh, he’s talking to ME right now. God wants me to come here and be this warrior woman and do amazing things here,’ ” she remembers. “That message hit me really hard in the heart.” She met with administrators who told her about GCU’s passion for the B Y R I C K V A C E K J E A N N E T T E C R U Z C O N T R I B U T E D T O T H I S S T O R Y GCU, IN THEIR VIEW Community treasured: Four students share their thoughts about life on campus