11 MALONE UNIVERSITY
From Sugar
A semester away from graduating with a degree in Bible/Theology, one of Malone’s newest alumni, Jon Detweiler ’12, decided he needed an adventure. In a journey he dubbed “Sugar2Salt,” Detweiler and his cousin Ben Swartz canoed from Sugar Creek, to the Gulf of Mexico, ending at the most southern tip of Louisiana from August 14-November 3, 2011. Inspired to love the outdoors by his father, and having grown up on a farm, the city of Canton was, at times, overwhelming for Detweiler.While writing a Theology paper late one night in his residence hall, he was struck with a notion he couldn’t shake. “One of my frontiersman heroes did this journey himself way back in the 1700s, that helped influence why I chose canoeing, and because I don’t know many people who have done a trip like this,” Detweiler said. Sugar2Salt may have begun as a fun canoe trip for two twenty-something cousins, but became a mission to help raise awareness and funds for IRIS Ministries, an orphanage that supports nearly 10,000 children around the world and equips new generations of African pastors through education. This experience – which spanned 2,477 miles, five connecting rivers, and 10 states – allowed Detweiler and Ben to experience God’s provision and protection in brand new ways. “The most striking, kind of surprising, thing to me is we have not been denied once when we have asked to stay in somebody’s yard to set up a tent,” Detweiler told the Dyersburg State Gazette, a newspaper that ran a story about them last October 2. “I expected these people would have been a little more afraid of us. It’s restoring my faith in America and people just in general. One lady even brought us breakfast
to Salt
A COMMUNITY ON THE RISE down on a tray the next morning. It has been a complete blessing to me.” The story drew a great deal of other media attention – newspapers along their journey.You can read about their adventures, watch videos, and see photographs at www.sugar2salt.com – or, of course, find them on Facebook. Detweiler says God’s provision was a theme in his time at Malone. After high school he began looking for colleges just because, he says, that’s what everyone else was doing. He took several visits to different schools, but only in reading about the Bible/Theology major at Malone did he sense peace in his decisionmaking process. As a lover of the outdoors, Detweiler had difficulty adjusting to city life. That is, until he began to serve it. “It wasn’t until I served at the Refuge of Hope that I got an attitude change about Canton, I started to recognize homeless people I would see, and started to value it as a place,” he said. Detweiler also became active in the LoveCanton ministry. Detweiler says that college became a place where he built foundational relationships. “A lot of the value of the cost of college for me has been in friendships. My purpose with my peers
will be intertwined for the rest of our lives,” he said. His ability to build quality relationships started with his close-knit family, many of who are Malone alumni: Detweiler is the son of S. Conrad and Kathy (Witmer) ’87, and is related to numerous other alumni such as his uncle Linford Detweiler ’87 and aunt Karin Bergquist ’88 of the band Over the Rhine. The journey concluded November 3, 2011, to a poetic finish of dolphins ushering them into the Gulf as they wrote about on their blog: “About a hundred yards out I caught, in my peripherals, a glimpse of a fin. I swung my head to the left in time to see a grey fin disappear. ‘Shark! Dolphin! Shark? Dolphin?’ I yelled. Once it resurfaced and I got a better glimpse of its fin and heard the blowhole I knew it was a dolphin. The little pod of five or so
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followed us to the left and rear while we put in the literal finishing strokes on the figurative canvas that has been this trip.The Gulf opened wide before us with small islands to the right and oil derricks far off on the horizon. Speaking of horizons, the Gulf oil spill, we heard, happened just thirty miles south of the end of South Pass, maybe fifty miles from where we stood; there were no tar balls or residue. Not wanting to leave the dolphins we paddled and floated out a little ways and watched them porpoise around us.The weather was perfect and the fact that we now had ocean waves moving us around nearly made me laugh out loud with delight.” What's next for Detweiler? He wrote in his final blog entry that, “you’ll probably be able to find me sitting on the bridge over Sugar Creek, feet dangling over this side, thinking about where the water goes.”
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Dr. David King for his appointment as President of Malone University! Wishing everyone at Malone University best wishes and success! Your neighbors and friends from St. Haralambos Greek Orthodox Church 251 25th St. N.W., Canton, OH 44709
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