Media Fellowship International

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MFI — Media Support - Blacksburg, VA - VA Tech Campus

The unthinkable happened on Monday, April 17th when 32 students and faculty were murdered without cause by someone from within the student body.

These Victims were from across the country and even from other countries. The world waited to hear the news.

The media is often criticized but in reality, we depend greatly on their reporting and interviews. They stand so close to the tragedy but must remain objective, making conscientious decisions about what to say and what to air. They too grieve. Who is there to help the media?

The victims have many support teams who offer assistance, food, counseling, housing and encouragement. Media Fellowship International has the Media Support Team to reach out to those on the news crews as well as others in great need on the site.

Media Support Center

The MFI Media Support Center exists to offer hospitality and a hand of friendship to the news crews. The Support Team, media professionals themselves, is on location with them, helping them cope with the emotional and physical challenges.

"Once you know who the enemy is,
the battle is half over."

Our MFI trailer was placed in the center of campus and became a place of refuge. Paul, our massage therapist from Seattle worked tirelessly to relieve STRESS by giving chair massages to each person who came by. It was a perfect demonstration of the Lord’s healing touch when words are simply not sufficient.

The networks have done a wonderful job in keeping everyone informed from a news standpoint. MFI’s purpose is in being there is to love, show the compassion of our Lord and embrace the souls of those who cannot comprehend the devastation they feel. You could almost hear the cry of their hearts in the silence and the expressions on their faces spoke volumes to us.

Our team met with everyone from upper operation engineers to the press, on-camera people and photographers to the students and families, realizing that this could have happened anywhere.

Professor Liviu Librescu, who was a holocaust survivor, was greatly loved by his students. He blocked the classroom door with his own body to protect the students inside. He along with the other 31 students and professors who died are the real heroes.

The only motive of the MFI body of Christ is to reach out in love to those who haven’t even had time to mourn. It’s all so fresh and yet we know our Lord will meet their needs. Someone said, “If I die, I will be with Jesus and if I live, Jesus will be with me.” It is our prayer that either way, these hearts will know the Lord, the only One who will be with them while they live and when their time comes to depart. We will never understand why these lives were taken, but we do know how important it is to live in light of Eternity.

A tragedy like this gets our attention! We become aware of each other and reach out to help. In this case we need to know what happened so that we can prepare ourselves and prevent this from ever happening again.

Sharing the memories of those who are gone. Their stories need to be told so that we will remember them.

Our hearts are joined in prayer with those who mourn.

News teams from across the world tell the stories, alert us to similar dangers and help us prepare to prevent them.

Our hearts share the grief of the victims. There is another group however, in the trenches as well, but often overlooked. The “Media” – the news crews, cameramen, reporters, anchors, technicians- are people too. Their job is to gather the facts of the incident and report the news quickly, fairly and completely to the waiting world.

The news media are always the outsiders, perceived as the antagonists, not trusted, considered as invaders into the privacy of the situation. They work under difficult circumstances. They are the first to the scene, the closest to the event – hearing the details of sorrow and anguish – feeling the emotion, fear and discomfort – yet, trying to remain professionally objective and coherent in spite of appalling trauma and disaster.