Matthew TuttleMy name is Matthew Tuttle and I became involved with Long Island Youth for Christ when my youth group became “Campus Life Babylon” in 2005, when I was in 10th grade. I was a good kid from a Christian family who didn’t quite get the whole Christian thing, but between honoring my parents and pleasing my church family, I held on to what little faith I had. My new youth leader, Stephanie (Bambino) Eggers, recognized leadership potential in me and brought me on a retreat for SLM leaders. It was the first time I was exposed to people my own age who seriously followed Jesus, and it was the first time I was asked in a way that was relevant and understandable to also follow Him. I said “yes.”
In the next two years, I became the President of my high school’s Bible Club, where I began to lead and teach my peers into a deeper knowledge of God, I went on my first (and second) missions trip to Belize, where I came to understand God’s love for the forgotten and to develop a Christian worldview, and I became a student-leader for CL2, where I was given a chance to minister to kids who were in the same place I was before I had come to know Christ. When I came to Binghamton University in 2007, I was unsure about where my faith would take me. I ended up in a fellowship that was upfront about wanting to make a difference- they wanted to transform lives, to renew the campus, to change the world- and that vision resonated in me as a vision I had embraced while a part of Youth for Christ. Now a Senior, I am the President of that fellowship. I know that I have been brought to where I am only by the grace of God. He provided me with a loving family. He gave me a church that I could call “home.” He gave me a staff worker who encouraged, challenged, rebuked and loved me. He presented opportunities through YFC for me to grow in faith, character, and love. He threw at me opportunities to exercise leadership qualities that he gifted me with in CL, CL2, and SLM. For the past 3 years, I have been a leader at Summer Escape, and I volunteer whenever I can at CL and CL2. Stephanie, who was once my staff worker, is one of my closest friends, and I regularly look to her for wisdom and counsel. I am looking forward to a career in which I can care for people directly, and be a witness to my coworkers and clients. I am a proud and joyful follower of Christ, and I remind myself frequently of the invitation that was made at that SLM retreat in 10th grade- to “abandon it all” to follow Him. |  Matt Tuttle |
