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!

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.

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!

Ready for a new challenge

Tomorrow, I'll be headed out to Estes Park, Colorado to spend the summer with college students from all around the country, work at the YMCA of the Rockies and participate in LT, a program that helps create young leaders in the church.

I made my decision to go to LT early in the spring semester, so my anticipation for going to Colorado has been building for a while. I am excited to get out to Colorado for a number of reasons:

1. I will be challenged and encouraged daily to grow in my faith.

This year has been an awesome year of spiritual growth in my life. I’ve used this year to re-dedicate every minute of my life to the Lord and I’m doing all I can to be a great example of God’s love. The community that God provided for me through the Mark Twain Canvas Group and my core group was just what I needed to be motivated to live my life for Him.

With that said, there is still a lot of room for me to improve my relationship with the Lord and become more dedicated to serving Him daily. Being surrounded by about 150 Christian college students who have the same desire to grow in their faith will create an awesome atmosphere that will challenge me more than I have ever been challenged.

2. I will become more comfortable with outreach in preparation for next year.

As I look toward my senior year at Mizzou, I can’t help but be excited about all of the opportunities for outreach that we will have with the new Dobbs canvas group. That area of campus has been kind of neglected over the past couple of years, so a strong leadership group in that area will be necessary for it to be a prosperous canvas group.

With all of these opportunities to evangelize next year, I must use this summer to prepare myself to be bold and more intentional with incoming freshman. Even though I’m not officially a leader for the canvas group next year, being a senior means that freshman guys will naturally look up to me, so I have to be prepared to at least be a good role model.

The LT program is known for helping develop leaders (Leaders are developed at a leadership training camp? Who woulda guessed it?), so I am excited to see how I can finally become a true leader in the church.

3. I will grow closer to great people who love the Lord.

If I’m being honest, this past semester was the first time I really developed any relationships with people my age that were based on our shared love for the Lord. It was really the first time I realized what a true “brother” or “sister in Christ” was. Having people my age that can help me depend more on God with every passing day is something I have never really had in my life.

Whether it’s through encouraging words or just seeing what God is doing in other people’s lives, the power of friendships that are built on shared faith is undeniable. I’m really looking forward to finding more brothers and sisters in Christ in Colorado!

I’ve also thought of some specific goals for the summer: set out a specific time for God every day, read my Bible every day, learn to play the guitar a little better, be extremely committed to my project group, etc. This should be the best summer of my life, and God willing, it will be!

I’ll use this blog to keep everyone back home updated on all that I am learning and how I am growing in my faith! As you can tell, I'm extremely excited for what God has in store for me this summer and I hope some of you share that same excitement for me!