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Elizabeth Talbot, former associate speaker for the Voice of Prophecy radio broadcast, spoke at PUC May 18 and 19 about God’s abounding love and the Holy Spirit’s calling for each person. At Friday night Vespers, Talbot focused on the story of the Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus at the well, found in John chapter 4. “She had never met anybody who loved her more than her failures,” Talbot said of the Samaritan woman. Talbot outlined five obstacles the Samaritan woman had to overcome before Jesus could reach her. First came the obstacle of prejudice. Talbot said that this woman had an inferiority complex that prevented her from understanding how Jesus’ love transcended society’s prejudice. “God never spoke the prejudice language and never will,” Talbot declared. Second was superiority, seen in verse 12. The woman asked Jesus if He compared Himself to her ancestor Jacob as a way of giving herself false superiority. “Religious superiority is the worst kind,” Talbot said. “It’s when you bully other people with your religious heritage.” Third was her use of superficial truth, rather than the whole truth. In John 4:17, the woman told Jesus she had no husband, saying nothing of the five husbands she...

Critically acclaimed author Maxine Hong Kingston will present at Pacific Union College’s Colloquy Speaker Series May 31. In her well-known book The Woman Warrior, Kingston tells of her experiences growing up as an Asian-American in Stockton, Calif. She also wrote the National Book Award-winning China Men and is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to her writing, Kingston was a long-time professor of creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley, before her retirement in 2006. Kingston will present at 10 a.m. in the PUC Church Sanctuary.View additional information about the event...

On April 29, PUC’s fifth annual REVO event raised money for Project Pueblo—an organization working to eradicate global poverty. PUC has partnered with Project Pueblo twice just this year, taking student mission trips during Christmas and spring breaks to aid underdeveloped communities in Arizona’s Navajo Nation. Sunday evening on the campus mall, paper lanterns and handmade tissue flowers hung from the trees and pictures from Project Pueblo were suspended from clotheslines. A band made up of PUC students welcomed attendees with live music. Once the event was in full swing and guests had the chance to fill up on corndogs, quesadillas, rice and beans, and cupcakes, the main band took the stage, opening with The Boys are Back in Town by Thin Lizzy. As the students performed a concert, guests browsed the silent auctions, the Stuff Sale, and food options. The Stuff Sale was a big part of this year’s event. For months, students have been donating their nearest and dearest items—clothes, shoes, accessories, and more—to help the cause. Clotheslines formed a web among the trees on the mall, holding a multitude of hanging clothes. Shoes and accessories filled up nearby tables. Christmas lights suspended between tree trunks flickered on...

Twenty-one students and four professors from PUC’s department of psychology presented the conclusions from six research projects at the 92nd annual convention of the Western Psychological Association (WPA) in San Francisco, April 26-29. In addition to presenting research, the convention offered students the opportunity to attend lectures by prominent psychologists, learn about recent research in the field, network with professionals from throughout the region and otherwise prepare themselves for careers in psychology. Participating in and staying up to date on cutting-edge research is critical for students of psychology, explains Charlene Bainum, one of the PUC professors who was involved. The annual convention allows students to put everything they’ve learned from the field together, she says. Attendees at the convention present their independent research giving students a chance to learn about the most cutting-edge developments in the field. “You go from poster session to symposium to invited address,” Bainum adds. “They’re all talking about the latest thing that they’ve been doing.” For PUC students, however, the WPA convention is not only an opportunity to interact with leading psychologists and hear about their latest research; it is an opportunity to make their own contributions to the field in a professional setting. Presenting...

An award-winning documentary filmmaker and TV journalist gave a presentation on his work and career at Pacific Union College’s Communication Honor Society Symposium, May 4. Christof Putzel, a correspondent for Current TV’s Vanguard documentary series, spoke about his motivations and experiences as a young filmmaker to over 100 attendees at his afternoon presentation in PUC’s Scales Chapel. Recounting the start of his career as a documentary filmmaker, Putzel spoke about how the summer before his senior year, he took advantage of a school program that gave students $3,000 to spend exploring career interests. He spent half the money on a camcorder and the other half on a plane ticket to Kenya. ​​The end result was Left Behind, a documentary about Kenyan AIDS orphans, which he completed while still an undergraduate in college. "I had no idea what I was doing," he said, recalling that he did not even know how to operate the camcorder before leaving on the trip. "I just knew I wanted to go do something." Putzel spoke about how he arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, and began filming without any training except what he got through a chance meeting with a National Geographic employee who sat next to...