If you take a look into the list of Recognized Student Organizations at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Epic Movement is surprisingly the only student group that focuses on Asian American on campus.
It was quite challenging to launch an Epic Movement on the Lincoln campus, where the number of Asian American falls under the minority (the number of Asian American freshmen enrolled in the Fall 2012 semester is only 94 out of 3576 students, which is around 2% according to The Daily Nebraskan).
Our Epic journey started in 2010 when I was a freshman. Bailey, “ the only other Asian girl” in my Cru Bible Study at the time (whom later became my discipler) asked me out for a random lunch, and told me about this “Epic Movement West Coast Conference” in San Francisco. I remember it was November at the time, and the conference was coming up in January. Before I knew it, Bailey asked me “ Hey, do you wanna go? With me?” It was the first time I heard about Epic Movement, while Bailey knew about this after her involvement on an Epic Summer Project two years ago. Without knowing what I got myself in to, I said yes to her invite. That random lunch pretty much changed how my next three years of college would look like.
After coming back from the West Coast conference in January 2011 and experiencing an amazing community that we did not have in Nebraska, Bailey and I felt called to start an Epic Movement on our campus. I remember it was challenging to get connected to a few Asian Americans we knew on campus. The next school year after we launched Epic at an event, there were around five to six students gathering at a weekly Bible Study meeting. Later that year, five of us flew to San Francisco again for West Coast Epic Conference. By the end of the last school year, the number of students involved in Epic increased to eight. This school year, God has multiplied us abundantly, there were 22 students who came to the first meeting, and 11 students coming back to West Coast Epic conference in San Diego. Starting with two students two years ago, God has faithfully answered our prayer to grow our movement.
This year we have gone through some Bible Studies over a couple books in the New Testament, also having some travel opportunities to visit some other Epic Movement: the Legacy Summit Conference in MN (where one of our students actually accepted Christ!) and West Coast Winter Conference. God has truly done an amazing work at growing everyone in the group closer to Him in the understanding of the Gospel, the desire to know God personally, and also growing closer together as a community.
It has been a crazy journey launching and having an Epic Movement in Nebraska, and even though it has been challenging at times, I know that God has been, and will be doing so many other amazing things within our movement. Our dream is to reach out to Asian American students on campus and share with them the story of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve learned to “Dream Big!” all for His Glory!
Prudence Luong, UN Lincoln Epic Leader