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Thursday, July 26, 2012

Ready for the next chapter

Putt putting during life group!
During my major trial a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling that I wanted nothing more than to just go home and get life back to normal. I was sick of not having the ability to go get something to eat after midnight. I wanted something besides freakin' McDonalds. I was just sick of Estes Park.

Now that the trial has passed and my heart has been restored by God, I'm feeling as motivated as ever to keep on going in ministry and at LT. Since that happened, that means that I should be dreading leaving here in a week and a half, right?

Nope. I want nothing more than to be back in Columbia doing work for The Rock right now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying and savoring my last 10 days out here in Colorado. I've learned so much about leading out here in Colorado that I'm not even sure I've processed it all. God has been incredibly faithful with all my prayers and hopes and desires and I know he has what's best in store for me. I've got a great group of friends that I'll miss dearly when they go back to Bowling Green, Kent State, Illinois, Texas A&M, etc. I will miss the crap out of my project group, JDC, too.

Even with the amount of fun I am having and the growth and trust that I'm constantly gaining in God out here in Colorado, I still can't stop thinking about next school year and how we as a church can make the biggest impact for Christ at Mizzou. I can't wait to live in Columbia and be reunited with Irene, Elizabeth, Ben, Tony and all our other awesome friends in canvas group.

I love Mizzou.
This desire was fueled pretty heavily last night. We had an awesome Mizzou get-together last night that started with sharing a little bit of what God has done with us this summer and ended with a extended time of prayer in beautiful Moraine Park. After a long time of group prayer focused on the campus as a whole, we split up into canvas groups and made a number of specific requests to God for people in our group and for the health of the group in general.

Nothing could have excited me more than to hear my brothers and sisters in Christ from Mizzou praying expectantly for God to do crazy work this year on campus. I felt that insane passion that God has given me for the college campus rise up and really overwhelm me, so much so that my body was shaking out of excitement. I can't even fully express in words what I was feeling last night.

There is so much passion and desire for our church this year. We want awesome unity in our canvas groups. I felt God calling me to pray for specific people and for a huge focus on outreach throughout the whole 2012-2013 school year. We want to be able to raise up enough leaders to multiply canvas groups next year. We just want God to move radically in a way that no one can even imagine.

My heart for Mizzou is just overflowing right now. I just want to get to the next chapter of life and see what God has for me in the next year. I just want God to use me!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

God restores those who return to him

The Y on the 4th of July. Awesome day.
Since my last blog post, I've learned first hand how awesome and faithful God is when you come to him desperately.

After figuring out what was distressing me over the few weeks preceding my last post, I heard God calling me to rest in him and allow him to fill me up and restore me. Through that, He put this verse on my heart:
 
Psalm 23:1-3

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
    he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake. 

This verse has spoken so much to me in the past week. I didn't even remember the reference when I was thinking about it, I just knew the part about leading me beside quiet waters and refreshing my soul. That's exactly what God did for me over the past week.

Since I felt God calling me to rest in Him, I basically took four days to spend a lot of time alone with God, reading, praying and waiting expectantly to be filled up by him again. I'm not one to usually do a thing like this, but I certainly did learn the value of it when God showed some of his basic truths to me again. 

It's amazing to me how dumb we as humans can be. How can I forget that all I need is God's love to be sustained? That is something I have known for years, but in a moment of a trial, it is easy to forget in your heart for some reason. That's what happened to me this week. Through reading and being still to listen to God, he revealed those truths to me and really showed me how he loves me individually.

I'm learning how it's tougher than most people think to be in a leadership position in a church. There are a lot of outside pressures. The pressure to serve everyone in your group effectively is quite draining, but there is no doubt that I'm learning on the job and enjoying what God has taught me this summer. 

Continue to pray for all of us out here as we are all feeling some cabin fever and anxiousness to return home and back to our campuses. We just want to make sure that everyone makes the most of this awesome opportunity and grows as closely to God as possible so we can be as effective as possible when we get back on campus.

Thanks for all your support, everyone!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Spiritual dryness

It was a rainy week in Estes, too, which could be affecting everyone's mood!
So it seems like we're getting to that point in LT where everyone is tired, getting tired of being around the same people all the time and basically everyone just feels like they want to go home. Guess what? I'm feeling the same way. Just cause I'm an intern and just because I didn't go through that at all last year doesn't mean I'm immune from these feelings all the time!

This is part of the reason I didn't blog last week. I couldn't find the energy or the motivation to do so and I feel like I'm just kind of treading water right now. It's no fun.

Through this dry spot, I have felt God calling me to keep pushing on and persevering so I can see beautiful fruit at the end of the summer, but I honestly have no energy or desire to do that. It sucks because I know time at LT is precious and I need to take advantage of it, but every part of me is having a hard time desiring to be close to God. That sounds terrible, but a relationship is not always perfect, even with our Lord. Please pray that I can get over this spiritual low and that I can allow God to fill me up again as soon as possible.

The trial has allowed me to take the last couple of days to try and think and process why I am feeling this way, but I can't really pin it down at all to any specific things. This is something I have really struggled with too: feeling bad or uneasy and not knowing why.

Still, through processing all of this, I think what God is trying to teach me is that everything in ministry will not always be fun and games. That should be an obvious fact of life for me, but experiencing it so strongly here at LT while doing ministry work is giving me a good image of what to expect for a full-time staff member.

That's exactly what I wanted from this internship. I wanted to gain a full and clear picture of what full-time ministry could look like for me, both good and bad.

I don't want to be dishonest with anyone and tell everyone that it's all going great out here, but I don't want anyone to think that it has been a terrible last couple of weeks for me either. I've had some great project days, I got to hang out with my girlfriend, Irene, and there has been some awesome spiritual growth out here to watch! LT is still a great thing and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else for this whole summer.

I hope to post a more encouraging update next week!!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Stepping out in faith


Yesterday was supposed to be one of the more nerve wracking days of the summer for me. Our the project group spent the day focused on evangelism, so we spent an hour and a half in Boulder on Pearl Street sharing our faith and the Gospel with all who would listen.

I'd never done anything like that before because of some unexplained, deep-seeded fear inside me. Because of that fear, I probably should have been really nervous for the day and sharing my faith boldly to a stranger for the first time. God wasn't gonna allow me to be nervous though.

Through the quiet time we had in the morning before we left for Boulder, God gave me a whole lot of peace about the upcoming day. My co-leader, Michelle, put together an awesome guide of verses and things to pray about for evangelism and it really helped me put my focus on God and realize that the things I did during the day really didn't matter in the end. It wasn't my work that would help lead anyone to Christ, but instead I had to let the Spirit work through me and let it plant the seeds

When we got to Boulder, I was teamed up with a girl from Mizzou named Doona. We were walking around, looking for someone to talk to and I recognized a guy that I saw on an earlier trip to Boulder. When I was there earlier, I saw the guy and thought, "he'd be a good guy to talk to for evangelism." So when I saw him yesterday, I knew that God was telling me to go over to him and do just that

We walked up to him and asked him if we could play chess with him (he had a sign welcoming all challengers) in order to break the ice. After a bit of small talk, we got into a deeper discussion with him about spiritual things. He was raised by a staunch Catholic dad and chose not to be a Christian because the spiritual leaders around him couldn't answer all his questions about the faith and he "didn't believe in a bearded guy in the sky." Both were legitimate doubts, but it was clear that he had at least thought about the faith.

Still, this guy was obviously opposed to Christianity in general, but Doona and I still tried to share our faith in a way that would be appealing to him. Overall, I feel like we did a good job just making him feel loved, which he needed because he doesn't have any really good friends as a homeless guy in Boulder.

I could tell he appreciated us giving him some of our time, so maybe some seeds were planted there. We spent the whole hour and a half talking to him about his life, his past and his beliefs. How awesome is that? After the conversation I was full of joy because I felt God was there the entire time and he challenged me a lot to ask some tough questions. Sensing the things he wanted to ask me was really cool and responding to that push by the Spirit was great to.

I'd encourage everyone reading this to share your faith with a stranger as soon as possible, if you consider yourself a Christian. I think evangelizing is the best thing you can do to help strengthen your faith because you have to overcome fear and uncertainty.

Fear is a thing I dealt with a lot for the days leading up to yesterday, but God works through everyone who is bold enough to step out and just do it and he surely did that with our group. Everyone in our project group had a cool story about evangelizing and what God did to push them to another level. It was just an awesome picture of how God can empower people to do things they never thought they could do.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The power of a true community

Things just keep happening at LT! This week has been a great week, especially in the context of our project group (JDC!).

Most people that attend Colorado LT would say that the best part of the summer is their project group. After one and a half summers, I'd have to agree with that statement 100%.

This week, our group kind of took a break from long project days filled with spiritual discussions and instead just focused on building the camaraderie of the group with fun activities. I can say for sure that this was a great and much needed day off.

What? These are our normal clothes....
Our project clicked in certain ways pretty early on, but I feel like Monday's relaxing/fun project day kind of broke down the walls for a lot of the quieter members in our group and helped everyone just get to know everyone else's personality a lot better. (obviously. see the photos!)

JDC has been a huge blessing to me personally this summer and has been a great place and community for people to come with struggles, spiritual questions or anything else. It's great to see how openness and honesty is so prevalent in our group (especially life groups) after only four project days this year.

The true sign of a healthy community of God's people is how open the members of the group are. It takes a lot of great and committed people to be open and make a small group like this work, but that is exactly what we have this summer! Praise the Lord.

So basically what I am getting at is that we are making a more connected community of Christ-followers, which we know is extremely valuable. But, why is it valuable?

Britanny, Sam and Bennie looking good!
First of all, in this day and age, the most effective way to get people interested in Christianity and regularly attending church is the provide a group of friends that make them feel loved and accepted. In doing this, the power of God's love is shown and people are able to appreciate that love in a more real and physical way.

That was why I got hooked on my church at Missouri. That's how you get people interested in a relationship with God. That's why I want to do this as a career for the near future. Nothing gets me more excited than someone experiencing the love of God in a way they never thought was possible.

With the power of the community of our project group, I've seen people experience that love for the first time. I can't wait to grow closer together as a group and keep showing that love to those around us.

Another reason it is valuable is pushing growing Christians to a better and more committed relationship with the Lord. When you are constantly surrounded by a group of Christians that all have that same goal, motivation is easy to come by and accountability is everywhere. I like to say that you have no where to run from growth at LT (kind of true, even though it sounds scary) because of the insane amount of accountability that is built into the program.

Overall, the community of God is just a beautiful thing that everyone needs to experience!

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Rejoicing in the Lord's majesty

So one of my goals for the summer was to experience God more fully and realize how awesome he is and how worthy of my praise he really is. The first thing I can say about that is that God really satisfies our desires. Wow.

God has really been revealing a lot of his great love and power recently to me. If I said this to myself before the summer, I wouldn't have been surprised seeing as how I am LT and awesome life change happens out here on a yearly basis. But God has really shown his great power to me in so many awesome and different ways.

The big change is that those words (love and power) used to be just that to me, words. Now I can say I am truly experiencing God's love on a consistent basis throughout the day and it has been powering my faith more awesomely than I could have imagined. I can think of three recent things that I've realized/experienced that really illustrate this point pretty well!

Firstly, through the book we are reading through at LT, Walking as Jesus Walked, I have been able to come to the realization that Jesus was actually fully human.

That statement is something I'd heard a lot before the last couple of weeks, but I had never really grasped the meaning of it. I always picture Jesus as a human with God's powers inside of him, even though the Scripture makes it clear that he was only empowered by praying to God and having faith that his Father would provide for him.

Think about that. Jesus was exactly like any other normal human. The way he became the perfect sacrificial lamb for the sins of every other human was his incredible faith in God and the amount of time he spent in prayer. So the next logical question for me is why can't I be like that from now to the end of my life? I'm a sinful human, but Jesus was also a human and he was able to do it.


Through the talk from John Werst on Tuesday, I realized that when we suffer, we get immensely closer to Christ because he suffered in the exact way we suffer on a daily basis. He REALLY knows what we go through.

I want to walk like Jesus did.

Another way God showed me his awesome power is through a incredible miracle I saw last night. Our friend, Logan, got a pretty bad thigh bruise while playing basketball earlier in the afternoon and was having a pretty hard time walking around for the rest of the night.

Around 10 p.m., his project leader Dustin asked if he could lay hands on him and pray for healing for him. After they got done praying, what do you know? Logan could walk around with no limp and no real pain. God #doeswork if you really believe he will! It's amazing that stuff like that can still happen!

Finally, God has also been super faithful in answering prayers for me and a lot of the LT participants in recent weeks. I feel like everything I have been praying for has been answered rapidly by God and things are being made very clear to me by the Lord. I'm somehow getting more in touch with his Spirit (possibly through reading and studying his Word more consistently) and I feel really confident in what and where he wants me to be next year.

God is really doing work on me more than I thought was possible in my second go-round at LT and I can't wait for the next 7 1/2 weeks to see what else he can do!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

This year's struggle

Over two weeks in and I feel like this summer has been the exact opposite of last year's summer in many ways thus far. 

Social Life

First Rockies game of the year! "We" won 13-3
As an intern this year, my schedule is so flexible that I've had all the time in the world to hang out with whoever I want whenever they are available. I can adjust my work around when other people are available. I also no longer have to sit in the Rustic Cafe and watch my friends play card games and have a great time while I'm stuck at work. That's awesome for me because that was the hardest part of my summer last year. Now there is no excuse for me not to make deep relationships with everyone that God puts in my life.

The bad thing with not working at the Y, though, is that I'm having a hard time meeting non-LTers, especially since the Y put basically all of LT into one dorm by ourselves. Having a community with non-believers is one thing we really need to be able to reach out to people at the Y. It is hard for me specifically because I don't work or live with any of them. Pray that I am still able to find and seek out non-believers and share my faith with them

Time

Another huge difference for me this year has been how I spend my time. Last year, I had just become aware of my desperate need for personal growth and an understanding of God's love. While I'm still desperate for that (as every Christian should be), my job with GCM has made me turn my main focus outward to the students involved with LT. 

This desire isn't an inherently bad thing. Focusing on helping others improve their walks with God is a much needed thing and it's the thing that excites me most in life. I can't tell you how many times I've caught myself just smiling uncontrollably while listening to people talk about how much they have grown at LT so far. I desire to see that in everyone who has a budding relationship with Christ and that's what makes me think I want to do this full-time!

I'm still learning how to find the appropriate balance between spending time with others and building into them and spending time with God and allowing him to build into me.

Relationship with God

Sweet moonrise over Twin Sisters
Over the first week of LT, I basically neglected my relationship with God because of the hectic nature of the start of the program and because I think deep down I was starting to believe that I didn't need to focus on myself or my walk with God. Obviously that was dumb.

Through that trial, I've learned that the best way to be a good leader in a church setting is to set a great example of a fully-loving relationship with God for the people I am leading.
 
Like I've said before, my goal for the summer is to more fully understand Jesus' life and realize with my heart why God is worthy of my eternal praise.
 
Since that first week, I have been reading through various passages in the New Testament, but I'm mainly focusing on the Gospels, starting with Matthew. In reading and studying these chapters (with my new ESV Study Bible! Woo!) I am coming to a fuller understanding of who Jesus was and how his story and life connect so beautifully with what was prophecized in the Old Testament.
 
As far as the second goal, I have been in a constant state of joy and wonder so far this summer, rejoicing in what God is doing in my project group and in my life in general, which has certainly given me more reason to praise Him and realize his overwhelming power. Obviously, there is a long way to go in this goal and I'm sure I'll never be done learning!

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Learning to lead

Awesome sunset on Monday evening

LT has really gotten into full swing since I last posted, so this will probably be a pretty long post (but it's all really exciting!). We've had our first LT service, our day-long retreat and my project group had its first project day all in the last six days! I don't think we could have asked for a better or more fruitful start to #LT2012 than we have had in the last week.

Weather

Snow on CCYF
We all knew that Colorado would be fairly  cold, especially at the beginning of the summer, but no one expected this kind of weather! It has snowed twice since we have been here and I've had to wear a jacket during the day almost every single day. Hopefully it starts warming up soon so we can start playing baseball and tennis whenever we want!

LT Talks/Retreat

Andrew Schulz leading worship on Kickoff Night
Man, I can't tell you how awesome the talks have been so far this year. John Drage from Mizzou, Chris Ridgeway from Illinois and Brian Wiles from Bowling Green all hit great and thought-provoking points in the first 5 talks this summer and they have really challenged me and others to chase God fully this summer.

The kick-off talk by John Drage last Thursday really struck me because he talked about asking God what you want from Him in faith. A parable in Mark 10:46-52 says that if you do that, God will give you the desires of your heart. I've read that before but I can't say I've ever fully believed it. Since then, God has been super faithful in answering my prayers because I have truly decided to believe that God can answer prayers.

Talks at LT really strip away all the garbage and get to the point quickly, which is what I love. The theme of our Tuesday night talks is Jesus and the theme of our Thursday night talks is God's Leaders. I'm sure that through these talks and the stories from the Bible that are used in them, faith will be challenged and a deeper love of Christ will be formed. I would be willing to say that some people will become saved through the things they hear in these talks! Prayer for that will be fully appreciated!

Project Day - JDC!

Everyone telling our Project Group why they came to LT
My biggest job as an intern is leading a project group, a group of 20 people (in my case) that get together on a common day off to spend the day together searching for the Lord in a variety of ways. That includes worship, testimonies, small accountability groups and large group discussions, among other things. This group becomes a tight-knit community and is usually every LT participants favorite part of the summer.

My project day falls on a Monday this year, so we got lucky and got to be the first ones to have a project day!

Our day started with breakfast and a couple of "get-to-know-you" games. We wanted to form a good sense of community from the get-go, so we spent the entire morning asking silly questions to each other, playing Catch Phrase, etc. When we were making the plan for the day, I felt kind of silly and lame planning this much time for icebreakers, but in the end I'm glad we did it.

After lunch, God worked pretty quickly in our group to break down the walls and we seemed to be able to open up fairly easily when it came time to share testimonies and figure out what we wanted our vision for the group to be. All of our group is excited to be in Colorado and is solely focused on chasing the Lord, which isn't a given, even at Colorado LT, so that is very exciting for me. The atmosphere for growth is very high at LT, so I'm confident our group will help facilitate a lot of growth.

Establishing our vision was my favorite part of the day. This has been a big focus for the staff this year and I'm really happy our group has decided to run with it. We all discussed our values and what we all want to get from the summer, and through that, we decided that we wanted to accomplish three things in the next 10 weeks: establish a loving community, practice great encouragement within the group and be expert evangelizers.

Now that we have a vision, we will be able to keep each other accountable with it. Hopefully we can accomplish our goal!

We spent the rest of the day just hanging out, playing kickball and getting ice cream in downtown Estes Park. I can't wait for our second project day now!

Oh, and we came up with a pretty awesome name, but we are trying to keep it within the group for a while. All you need to know is JD! CCCCCCCCCCC!
 
Mizzou People

Steven and our new friend, Mabel, from Kent State!
I've been super excited to see how my friends from Mizzou are already growing closer to the Lord and giving up their whole summer to Him. It's nice to see everyone in the group do that, but when you watch people you have known for the last year or two dedicated themselves like that, you get a different and more satisfying feeling. Either way, it's awesome to watch God work and he is certainly already doing that in the first week of LT.

It has also been awesome to start to get to know the 4 staffers from Mizzou that are up here for LT: Kirstin and Andrew Schulz and Chris and Aimee Swift. They are awesome to work with and I've enjoyed just hanging out with them and leading together. If I do end up going back to Mizzou as a staff member, I know I'll have some friends and good leaders to work with!

Prayer Requests

- More personal growth in the Lord that can help translate into better leadership. I want to be a good leader, but I need to be reminded that the only way I can do that is by allowing God to have full control of my life and allowing him to do the work inside of me that he wants and needs to do.

- Pray that this program is used for awesome outreach. We've got a great opportunity to share the gospel with our co-workers and international students, but we've just got to do it! Pray for me specifically, as I need motivation and direction to do this because I only work at the YMCA 8 hours per week.

- Pray that our project group can continue to click well and that we are a great example of the love of God to everyone at the YMCA. Also pray for vulnerability within the group that leads to a better understanding of God's love, grace and faithfulness.

Thanks for reading this long post. More updates to come in the near future!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

A completely different experience

YMCA kids in front of my favorite mountains in the Park
I've made it back to Estes Park and I'm already getting settled in to my new role here as a GCM intern. Working with the five other interns has been a great blessing so far, especially since I knew four of them fairly well because of interactions at last year's LT. Going through this process together with them will only make this experience that much better.

At the beginning of last year's LT, I had no idea why I was here and what God wanted to do with me during the summer, but this year is the complete opposite. God showed me that I should come back to Estes Park as an intern to find out if full-time college ministry is the career path that I should be focused on when August comes around.

I'd have to say after being here less than a week that God is making it pretty clear that I would thoroughly enjoy being on a church's staff, I have the passion to do a great job at it and I also have some skills that could be used to further His kingdom. Hopefully it will stay that clear the rest of the summer, but whatever God decides to do is fine with me!

Staff Training


Team-building exercises on the first day of staff training
The first two full days that I spent in Estes were mostly filled doing really useful staff training with the rest of the interns and GCM pastors/staff from the 7 campuses that are participating in LT this year. 

A good friend (Robbie) of John Drage (my pastor at Mizzou and the director of LT) came and did some team-building exercises with us that were really relevant to our team. We'll be working together a lot this summer, so it was good to get to know each other a little more and do some activities that helped us find out more about the strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team. Robbie also helped relate all of our struggles and triumphs to how we will be trying to affect people for the Lord that aren't involved in the LT program. It was inspiring, to say the least!

We also did a bunch of other administrative training like how to work as a project leader/coach, but it was just generally good to meet all the people that will be making this program run and actually get to work on what we have been looking forward to for the last 9 months.

Everyone arrives!


LTers have been trickling in for the better part of the last week, but yesterday was the big day where the majority of LTers showed up and got settled in. LT officially started for me when I saw my friends Steven, Elena and Allie show up ready and excited to get the summer going. I can't tell you how excited I am for all my friends from Mizzou to have the same awesome experience I had at my first LT last year!

Last night we got to meet our co-project leaders and the life group leaders and I have to say that pumped me up even more! I'm stoked that Kirstin Schulz, a staffer from Mizzou, will be coaching my project group. If I want to go on staff at Mizzou, it will be valuable to have a good working relationship with some of the current staffers there. It was also good to finally put a face to the names of the students who I'll be leading our small group with. They all seem awesome and I'm sure they all love the Lord a lot, so I'm sure we'll be #doingwork all summer long! We are going to meet the rest of the group at 5 p.m. today, so be praying for us in that!

Overall, God has been doing some awesome work in the first couple of days that the staff has been here. I feel way more prepared to lead a project group now and the excitement keeps building for the program to get started. I've also read an entire book and hiked a mountain already too, so it hasn't all been hard work for me yet! I plan on working as hard as I can this summer, but rest is definitely needed, especially in a beautiful place like this.

I'll probably write another update after our first project day, which will be on Monday, May 28. A LOT of prayers are appreciated for that day because project groups are where the biggest growth in LTers (and even staff) occurs. Thanks for your support and prayers! They are all appreciated more than you'll ever know.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Goals for #LT2012

I’m sitting in Kansas (boo!) getting ready to make the last leg of my 2-day trip back to Colorado for the summer and I was thinking that I should make another goals list like I did last summer and at the beginning of the school year. It’s fun looking back at those posts and seeing how God worked through me in the summer and in my Canvas Group this year, so I want to be able to do that after my internship at Colorado LT 2012 is over in August.

Here's my five goals:
  1. The main goal that I have for the summer (and every Christian should have at all times!) is to improve my personal relationship with God. I want to concentrate this relationship during the summer on gaining a better understanding of His word. I just finished reading the Bible in a year, but I want to dive back into it even more to study the meaning and the connectedness of the Old and New Testament. With constant study of the Bible, it will be on the top of my mind more often and I will be able to use specific references when evangelizing to friends and strangers.
  2. Another big goal I have for the summer that can’t really be properly measured (oh well) is to effectively lead my project group. As an intern, one of my duties is to co-lead a group of 15 LT participants in activities for one full off-day together. It’s our biggest opportunity for a tight community and me and my co-leader will be responsible for creating that good sense of community. I have to be diligent and persistent, especially at the beginning of the summer in creating the community and I’ve never done anything like this before so it will be a big challenge, but I’m sure God will show me the way!
  3. As an intern, I’ll be working 40 hours a week for GCM instead of for the YMCA, so I will have a lot more opportunity to direct parts of the church program instead of being distracted with food service stuff (PTL). So another goal that I have is to be willing and able to do anything the staff needs me to do to make the program run better. That goes into my next goal, which is…
  4. I want to figure out if going on staff with a college church is what God wants from me after the summer. This idea was presented to me during the course of LT last year and I have been motivated all year long to work in order to find out if I am a good fit for a college staff. My passion for this possible job hasn’t waned over the past year, but has gotten even more intense. So I’ve got to sell out 100% to my internship to see if I could do it full time. A lot of prayer is appreciated here.
  5. And finally, a goal I won’t have any problem reaching: have fun! The mountains in Colorado are great and the community of believers is awesome. Nothing better than a summer with people chasing God and being awesome! I can’t wait to get there later today!
 If you want to get more updates on my summer, keep checking this blog because I'm gonna make a good effort to update it weekly! I can't wait to see what God does with my summer and everyone I come in contact with out in Colorado.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Interning and the Future


Well, it seems as if I have neglected this blog for reasons not restricted to busy-ness, forgetfullness and no-reason-to-postness. The final reason for neglection has dropped off the list with my decision to go back to Colorado this summer and intern with my church at Mizzou and the group of churches it is involved with (GCM), so here I am blogging again! Exciting, I know.

My decision to go back was made over a long period of praying about it and examining my other options, but I felt like God was not giving me any reason to go anywhere else, so back to Coloardo I go!

If you don't know what happened with me at last summer's LT program, the general gist of it is that just before leaving for the program in May, I was feeling down on finding a career in journalism (wasn't for me, didn't feel good enough to be in the field, felt it would be a huge time suck), so I asked God to make His path for my life extremely apparent.

Through discipling, being in community and just being surrounded by God's beauty in Colorado, I felt led to take more of a leadership role in my church, which led me to desire to come back to Colorado in 2012 to see if full-time college ministry is where I should be after I graduate college in May.

So what does interning mean to me and for my future?

Well, first of all, I will get a lot of good experience in raising my own support through financial gifts from friends, family and possibly strangers. That is a big part of getting to be a part of full-time ministry, so experiencing a little preview of that will be good for me!

The internship will also show me if there is a place for me in college ministry, whether it be in administration, leading, disciple-making, mentoring or whatever other role I can fill. I believe God is pushing me in this direction for some big reason, but I'll just have to trust Him and see what comes out of it.

I plan to blog about the trials and triumphs of my support-raising time as well as what I actually am doing when I am back in Estes Park #doingwork for GCM and for the Lord! I hope you guys are as excited as I am.