Lee University’s Dee Lavender Missions Week will take place Tuesday, Oct. 22, through Thursday, Oct. 24, and will feature several special services and events. 

Lavender was a Lee University student who died on a summer mission trip to Panama just before her 21st birthday in 1991, and since then, Lee has honored her through its annual Missions Week.  

“We are revitalizing the person for whom Missions Week has been carried out since the 90s, Dee Lavender,” said Lee Campus Pastor Wesley Lutes. “We hope to reintroduce her story to the student body in hopes that her life might inspire other students to serve Christ around the world.” 

Partnering with Church of God (COG) World Missions, chapel services will be missions oriented. Dewayne Moree, the multimedia coordinator for COG World Missions, will host a student panel on Tuesday, and Dr. Steve Hall, associate professor of pastoral ministry, will host a panel on Thursday. Along with the panels, stories of what God is doing around the world through COG World Missions will also be shared.

Chapel services begin at 10:45 a.m. and are open to the public. A special offering will be taken for missions during chapel services.

On Thursday, the COG World Missions Department and several mission organizations will have exhibits set up in the Ped Mall immediately after chapel until 4 p.m. Exhibitors will also be hosted in various classrooms across campus on Tuesday and Wednesday to meet with students and allow them the opportunity to learn more about missions. 

All money raised from individual donations and offerings in chapel during Missions Week will go toward building a well for clean drinking water for a community in El Salvador. This is through “The Thirst Initiative” which has the mission “to quench the community’s physical thirst in order to provide a thirst for the Living Water.” 

Missions Week projects have been in place for more than 20 years, and a week devoted to missions has been part of Lee programming since the 1940s.   

For more information on “The Thirst Initiative,” visit ctgfoundation.org/, and to make online donations, visit donorbox.org/365-project-water.

For more information about Dee Lavender Missions Week, visit /missions-week/ or contact Campus Ministries at (423) 614-8420.