Why share a senior testimony?

Senior testimonies are a PHC tradition. Many students find that God worked in their lives in powerful ways during their time at PHC and feel called to share what God has done in one of PHC’s tri-weekly corporate chapels.

Seniors who put their names down experience mentorship through the writing process from President Jack Haye. Eventually, they find themselves on stage in chapel, looking down at the sea of upturned faces of students, all waiting expectantly to hear what words of wisdom they have to share.

Read more to learn why two PHC alumni gave their senior testimonies. 

Hannah Gaschler 

Hannah Gaschler (JRN, '25) never wanted to give a senior testimony.

I don't have anything good to say. I'm scared to get in front of chapel and tell people my story. I don’t think I can even define what my story is in ten minutes, she told herself.

Then, in her senior year, Gaschler felt God telling her through conversation after conversation with her mom, people at church, friends, and classmates that she had a story and that He wanted her to share it.

She realized that other students were struggling to work through the same things that she had during her time at PHC.

“I felt very alone in the struggles that I had been having. And I thought, If I were a freshman or if I were a sophomore, what would I need to hear?  I wanted to help them, and I wanted to share my story in hopes that someone else would connect with it and it might encourage them,” Gaschler said.

Not only that, but she found that she wanted to write out her story. She wanted to remember forever what she had experienced and learned from God during her time in college.

“I knew that I was most likely not going to write it out if I didn’t sign up to give a senior testimony. It was a way to force myself to do it,” Gaschler said.

Landon Allmond

Landon Allmond (APP ’25), who is now the new male Resident Director at PHC, is an example of someone who was influenced by a senior testimony as a senior in high school.

When Allmond visited PHC as a prospective student, he toured the campus and met professors and students. Yet, he still wasn’t sure if PHC was the place he was meant to be. Then, he sat down with the student body in chapel to hear two students give their senior testimonies.

Of the two, Hope Sluka’s (GOV: SI, '22) struck him the most.

“In His grace, God has revealed his purpose and love in every painful thing I’ve experienced while at school. But He may not have revealed those things, had I not obeyed His request of total surrender,” Sluka said.

Allmond left that chapel service knowing that, as PHC had been a place for Sluka to grow academically and spiritually, it would be that place for him as well. He was acutely aware that God wanted him at PHC and wanted him to give a senior testimony at the end of that time.

“It was an opportunity for me to give back to the college and thank the people who have really helped me through my journey here,” Allmond said.

Patrick Henry College exists to glorify God by challenging the status quo in higher education, lifting high both faith and reason within a rigorous academic environment; thereby preserving for posterity the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is the foundation of America.