On October 6, more than 125 alumni and friends of Au Sable gathered at the Bissell Tree House in Grand Rapids, Michigan to celebrate and strengthen the work of the Institute at an event titled Serve. Protect. Restore. Together. Members of the Au Sable community enjoyed connecting with each other on a beautiful fall evening and taking in the views from the second-highest point in Grand Rapids amidst the canopy of mature maples and oaks.
The program began with a video introducing Au Sable before board chair Dr. Bethany Laursen opened with prayer and thanked the evening’s sponsors: Cottage Home, Michigan In-Sights Consulting, and Inspiring Impact. Bethany is an Au Sable alum and noted that the first two sponsoring businesses are also owned by fellow Au Sable alumni, Brian Bosgraaf and Anna Mitterling.
Au Sable’s Executive Director, Jon Terry then announced the successful completion of Au Sable’s Strong Roots, New Growth capital campaign, which had been publicly launched one year prior in the same room. The campaign surpassed its fundraising goal of $770,000, raising a total of $803,333 with gifts from 217 donor households.
The highlight of the evening was hearing from two recent Au Sable alumni from the Grand Rapids area. Maia Peterson, who studied at the Great Lakes campus this summer as the Cal DeWitt Leadership Fellow, is currently a junior at Calvin University in Grand Rapids. Maia shared how formative her experience at Au Sable had been:
“I read recently that one of the purposes of Christian community is to ‘surround ourselves with those who make us want to be faithful’ and at Au Sable I found those people.”
Ben Zwart studied at Au Sable’s Pacific Rim campus in 2023 and returned to work as an RA at PacRim in 2025 after graduating from Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Ben, who works now as an arborist in West Michigan, reflected on how his professors and other staff at Au Sable helped him to feel a sense of “home” as he studied on Whidbey Island far from his physical home in Michigan.
For both Maia and Ben, the Christian community they each found at Au Sable was central to their experience and their talks reinforced the evening’s theme: Serve. Protect. Restore. Together. Jon Terry emphasized that the supporters gathered that evening were also a key part of the Au Sable community whose generosity allows Au Sable to offer more than $200,000 of financial assistance each year, keeping the cost of studying at Au Sable within reach for students like Ben and Maia.
The Au Sable community responded generously, with the event bringing in more than $41,000 in support of Au Sable’s mission. And after closing the evening by singing the Doxology, many of the guests lingered for another 30-40 minutes, simply enjoying being together with new and old friends who share Au Sable’s commitment to caring for God’s good creation.
