Godfrey Miranda Takes On Winter Revival

Students, faculty and staff at Pacific Union College enjoyed a week of spiritual rejuvenation as Winter Revival took place on campus. The quarterly revival featured PUC alum Godfrey Miranda, ‘05, a pastor from Central California and a student at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological seminary, who brought the campus together in prayer and worship in a series of meetings held from Wednesday, January 19, through Saturday, January 22.

Miranda flew in from Michigan with his wife and daughter last week upon the request of family friend and Student Association religious vice president Mark Monterroso, who asked Miranda to be the first of a group of speakers he hopes will challenge people on campus to develop a closer relationship with God. “I want students to work towards something that’s not necessarily out of their reach, but something that they’ll have to make an effort to do,” said Monterroso. “This quarter, we’re going to learn to actually take ownership of ‘you and God’; not let somebody carry you through it or just going by observation.”

To get started on this goal, Miranda encouraged the campus to continue the revival past the single week by dedicating time daily to build a closer relationship with Christ. “God’s goal for the week is to teach us how to keep having personal revivals,” he said. ”If there is one thing we need to keep this up, it’s time with God.”

Miranda called the campus to commit to appointments which he called “Jesus time.” “When we think we’ve seen everything about God, there’s nothing left to learn and worship becomes stale,” he said. “There’s always something to see about him that we haven’t seen before.”

Each meeting was well attended in spite of scheduling conflicts with intramural sports, classes and an overall busy quarter—a fact Monterroso attributes to Miranda’s straightforward style. “He doesn’t bring a lot of personal stuff to the table, telling stories about his life this and that; he has substance, and I think that’s what the campus is asking for this year,” he said. “Godfrey gave us a cognitive week of prayer that will encourage all of us to make our beliefs our own.”