The Mr. Biola Beauty Pageant evoked hearty laughs from 300 plus people in Sutherland Auditorium on Tuesday and accrued ticket sales to fund two Biola students’ mission trips this coming summer.
PAGEANT FOR A GOOD CAUSE
Natalie Ginder, a sophomore biblical studies major, and Jeremy Hamann, a junior psychology major, created the comedic pageant as a means to help raise $4,500 each for their mission trips to Poland and the Czech Republic with the Josiah Venture organization. They ended up making $1500, which blew their estimates out of the water, said Hamann.
“There’s only 1 percent of youth in Eastern Europe proclaiming to be Evangelical Christians,” Ginder said. “My team is going to reach out to students who wouldn’t normally go to church and get them plugged in so that they have continued discipleships.”
Ginder, who plans to equip the overseas church in Poland by running English camps for high schoolers, stated that this pageant was a chance for students to appreciate the men on campus and enjoy each man’s unique sense of humor as he walked down the catwalk, performed his talent and answered interview questions.
MR. BIOLA CONTESTANTS HAVE HILARIOUS TALENT
Filled with such a wide variety of talent, the pageant provided everything from air guitar and stand-up comedy to runaway birds and animal impersonations.
“My favorite part was seeing the many different talents of Biola men and the very awesome gifts that God has given them,” said freshman nursing major Aimee Keehn.
Ginder added that in the beauty, talent and interview segments of the pageant Biola could come together in fellowship and at the same time assist Ginder and Hamann in raising their own support for their trips.
“At the end of the day, this is all for a good cause in Europe,” Hamann said.
He stated that while they were not just asking people for money in order to fundraise for their own ability to go, they wanted to give back to the students by providing them with a humorous pageant filled with their peers.
Jeremy Pedron, one contestant who feigned a shy persona throughout the night, brought his parakeet, Falcon, on stage with him, but could not call Falcon back after his initial release of the bird. After climbing up on chairs and continuously calling Falcon’s name to return to him, Pedron ran off stage leaving the bird perched upside down on the ceiling.
Jordan Smith, a junior biblical studies major, took a few moments pondering over which contestant he enjoyed the most.
“It’s hard because I knew a lot of them, but I got to say that I loved the bird. It was so funny,” said Smith.
Emma Fitz, a junior nursing major, said Andre Murillo was by far her favorite contestant because of his interpretive dancing in which he wore only a pair of spandex shorts and a tank top.
“He’s tall. Like me,” Fitz said.
While the judges discussed who the winner of the pageant should be, freshman Christian ministries major Brady Lee took the stage for some magical entertainment. Riling up the crowd through his slips of the hands and fingers, Lee confused and astounded almost all of the onlooking crowd.
CHAD DUARTE CROWNED AS MR. BIOLA
Chad Duarte ended up taking the crown as the first annual “Mr. Biola” for he and his assistant’s yoga ball stunt. Dressed in a tutu and tank top, Duarte brought up another similarly dressed friend to dance with a yoga ball in between them the entire time. Throughout his stunt, he replaced the ball with a beach ball and then eventually a ping pong ball so that the space in between the two kept reducing.
“Everybody was hilarious, but I loved the part where Chad and [his friend] did the ball stunt. It was super cool,” said freshman business major Kayla Jin.
