Student Accolade

LeAnn Gardner is in a room, surrounded by stacks of new shoes. For some women, it could be considered a dream come true. And for Gardner -- who in November helped deliver more than 500 pairs of shoes to orphaned children in Russia -- the thought is not far from the truth. 
"The issue that has really touched my heart is poverty," says Gardner, a graduate student in Baylor's Master of Divinity/
Master of Social Work joint degree program. "Jesus addressed the poor. He addressed those who were outcasts of society. Growing up in the upper-middle class, I never had the chance to see or smell poverty."
But Gardner did see its effects while serving for two years as a missionary in Guinea, West Africa, another part of the world where people have tremendous physical needs. 
"These kids would walk around with open wounds that would get infected -- things we would never think about happening," says Gardner, who graduated with a degree in human development from Samford University in 1997. "We have Band-Aids. We have antibiotics. I very quickly realized that if I ever did grad school, I could not do just social work or just seminary. I knew I was going to have to combine them." 
In 2000, she found the perfect fit at Baylor, where she now is one of about 25 graduate students working toward their MDiv/MSW. "It's so hard to separate our bodies from our spirits," Gardner says. "Even if you're interested in pastoring, social work is such a good way to see ministry because it views people as whole people with physical and spiritual needs." 
She expects to complete the four-year program -- two years for each degree -- on time and continues to supplement her academic training with real-world application. Currently, she is interning with Dallas-based Buckner Baptist Benevolences, the group that organized the "Shoes for Orphan Souls" project, for which she made the 10-day trip to Russia. 
"I have learned so much about God that I feel I couldn't have learned without leaving home," she says. "Experiencing another culture is encountering a part of God that may be more difficult to understand in our own cultural context."