24 Hour Prayer

Hey friends!

Well every week we have a group of students who meet at 7am to pray for SFA on Thursday mornings. Yes, college students, at 7 am! I know, crazy! Well that awesome group organized a 24 hour prayer event this week.

Students met at 7pm Wednesday night, and kicked it off by praying together, and then prayer walking around the campus. They also were given suggestions of things to be praying for SFA during the next 24 hours. Then at 7am they met again to pray together for SFA. Finally, they group met all again at 7pm at our CRU weekly meeting, and closed the time by writing out prayers to the Lord and thanking Him for what He has been doing in their life. Then during our praise time, the students taped their prayer on a large poster. It was really cool to read some of the things the student voiced in the cards they posted.

One cool story that I got a chance to hear: One of our students who trusted Christ this semester came to the 24Hour Prayer Meetings. She had never been to anything like it before. She was in a small group with her Bible study leader, and as they walked around praying, she was quiet and just listened to the prayers. At the last location on the prayer walk, her Bible study leader gently asked her to pray, and explained that praying out loud was not any different than praying silently, just other people get to join in with your prayer to the Lord. The girl agreed, and for the first time prayed out loud in a group. Later, she went to her Bible study leader and thanked her for encouraging her to take the step and pray out loud. She said it was something that she had been wanting to do, but she was too scared and nervous to do it. But she was really excited and thankful for taking the step in her faith!

Thank you for your prayers for our students, we know that God is at work and changing their lives!

Coffee outreach outcome....

Half way through each college semester at SFA the teachers give out Mid-terms which basically give students get a taste of what the dreaded finals week has in store for them. We decided to take advantage of the increased amount of studiers at the library, so we set up outside of it to give out free coffee in an attempt meet new students that we could then share the Gospel with.

On the Tuesday night of this event we met a guy named Andrew, who did not have a relationship with the Lord. Andrew connected really well with one of our leadership students named John, and John set up a time to meet with Andrew later on the next week. They ended up meeting a few times and talking about the Gospel, and what the Bible says about God. A few weeks later Andrew called up John and insisted they meet immediately to talk about some problems he was having. During the meeting John again shared the Gospel with Andrew, and at the Starbucks on campus Andrew prayed to receive Jesus Christ into his life and began a relationship with the Lord!

Now Andrew can’t get enough of the Bible, and he is constantly asking questions. He is convinced that others should experience God in the same way as he does. In fact, he spent one Friday afternoon on campus meeting new people, and ended up sharing the Gospel with 7 people! We are so excited for what God is doing in and through Andrew.

First Greek Women’s Bible Study Tonight!

Around here, we are pretty excited because tonight at 9 we kick off our vey first all women’s Greek Bible study!

Photographer: Franz Pfluegl | Agency: Dreamstime.com

About two months ago Nicole (on staff with me) and I began to pray for opening to build relationships with girls in the Greek system. A month ago, we went to all the Panhellenic sorority meeting to invite them to an event where the could learn how to leave a legacy as a sister in their sorority, and how they could leave a spiritual legacy as well. The Greek system here is  pretty crazy. Picture college movies, and you can picture what its like. To our surprise, we had 13 girls who were from 3 different sororities who are really interested in following Christ, and helping their sisters to know about God who came to the meeting! During the meeting, we also told them we would love to start an all Greek girls Bible study,  and left a sign up for anyone who was interested. To our shock, all 13 girls signed up! We are excited that for the first time in years we are meeting girls from the Greek world, and praying that God can use us!

So tonight, we are really pumped, and praying that the girls will come, and bring a sister so that they can hear about Christ!

If you are reading this before 9 tonight, please be praying that Nicole and I will be led by the Spirit, and share with the girls who come about the Lord, and the relationship He desires to have with each of them!

Thanks!

Friday Outreach

Every Friday we have what we call "Friday Outreach"...i know...creative name. But, we take this opportunity with some of our students to go out on campus and try to get into spiritual conversations with students hanging out during the afternoon. This has gone very well this year so far, have had the gospel shared a number of times, and have seen our students step out in faith to share what Christ has done for them.
Today I had a great conversation with three students I met sitting next to the Stephen F Austin statue. The goal was to get to know these students and to use some of the tools that we have to help us talk through life and spiritual things with them. 2 of the 3 students claimed to be believers, though they couldn't put a Biblical thought to it, so most of the conversation with them was a little difficult. But the 3rd guy was really open and honest about what he believes and about his life. It was really refreshing. He said he was agnostic and stuck to it. As we talked deeper about who Jesus said He was and about what Jesus was doing on the cross, this guy became more and more intrigued. It was the first time he had ever been told that Jesus was God, the Jesus was perfect, and that Jesus chose to die of the cross, and that He didn't have to. It was his first time to hear that he could know God in a personal way.
It was a great conversation, and I am getting together with him next week again to get to know him a little better, and to sort through what the Bible says. Please pray for him and for our appt next week, that Jesus would use that time to call him into a relationship. That the student would believe what the Bible says is true, and that he's place his faith in Christ.
thank!

Cru Coffee House

Can serving free coffee help lead students to Christ? Well, we'lll see. Last week was mid-terms for many students on campus at SFA, so that means the library will be crazy busy. We realized that this may be a good opportunity to meet some new students to share the Gospel with.
So, us and our leadership students pulled together a small outreach where we would hand out free coffee in front of the library late last Tuesday and Wednesday night. Each student who gets a coffee also fills out a short survey for us where they can indicate a desire to learn more about a relationship with God. We had never done this before, so my expectations were optimistic, but kinda low.
It went so well! We had around 150 people stop by to get some coffee and almost 100 of those indicated they wanted to get together to hear about a relationship with God. We are so excited! Please pray for me, Autumn, our other staff and students as we call through these new contacts and attempt to set up some appointments so that we can share our faith, and love on the students at SFA.

Life change

Life change. We all want to have it, but sometimes it is slow and hard to see. Other days, it unfolds right before our very eyes.  Last week, on Tuesday, I had a really cool day and got to see first hand God changing lives! I get to a chance to co-lead a women’s discipleship group for  our leadership girls. That Tuesday, one of my girls was late to our meeting, which was kind of frustrating. Once she got to our house, she explained it was because she had just gotten through sharing the gospel with a new friend, and the girl actually placed her faith in Christ this afternoon! Here’s the longer story. She had gotten a phone call from a girl she met early on this fall, and the girl had a friend who really needed to talk with someone! My sweet student dropped what she was doing, and hurried to meet and comfort this girl she had never met before! This takes courage, and is to cool to see how the Spirit was at work! Turns out, the girl was having a really hard semester, was questioning life, and really just was freaked out, and to top it all off,  it was her birthday, and things just were not going well. But talk about a day turning from bad to good! Her literal birthday became her spiritual birthday as she heard the gospel and placed her faith in Christ! Also, kinda cool, my girl did not have her materials with her, but because she had memorized the gospel for her mission trip this past summer, she was ready to share with the girl! Back to the girls discipleship, we could not even begin to be frustrated! What a great reason to be late! Our frustration turned to joy as we celebrated our new sister in Christ!

And then later that night  I got to share the gospel with a girl who had no idea who Jesus was, and she was incredibly open and curious about the Gospel! Please pray that God continues to bring to mind the things she heard, and that she would place her faith in Christ! Just getting to see God's hand at work on a daily basis is fantastic!

Exciting Cru coming up!

Cru this Thursday night is something I’m really looking forward to. Every Cru more or less looks similar. There are announcements, maybe a funny video or skit, the worship, and a short talk about the Bible. Nothing about that is changing, however it’s the talk I’m excited for.
One of the guys that I have been discipling, named Eric, expressed about a month ago interest in doing a talk at Cru. He had scripture that the Lord had been teaching him from and wanted to share that with the students at Cru.
This isn’t something that usually happens; the talks are typically staff, and experienced believers that we bring in to talk. But, Eric is a guy who has been walking with God for a few years and who demonstrates a mature relationship with the Lord where he makes great decisions based on God’s will for his life, so we are letting him go for it!
Eric has an atheistic background and is talking about the part of Matthews story when Jesus is answering questions from Pontius Pilate about who He is. Eric has a great heart for the Lord and I know he’s gonna do a great job on his talk Thursday night. I wanted to inform you first because I just think it’s cool, and second so you can be praying for him because he doesn’t naturally feel comfortable being upfront. Please pray that the Lord would speak through him, that Eric would prepare well, and that he would be calm and able to be himself.

Fall Retreat!!

Hey guys! Sorry it has taken so long! Actually, we are so excited about the things that the Lord did during Fall Retreat this year that we actually just sent you out a prayer letter about it! So be looking for that in your mailbox any day now, if you don't have it already!
For those of you who just can't wait, we had a great retreat!
We joined with 2 other campuses for our retreat this year, and we brought 30 students from SFA to get away from normal life, and to connect with God. The students got to hear from Erin O'Brein, the Campus Director for Campus Crusade for Christ for Texas State, and the whole southwest Texas region. We were blessed to get to hear him talk about God's will for our lives, and how we can please him, honor him, and make decisions that bring him the glory!
In addition to the great talks, we had retreat Olympics, and hoedown, coffee shop, and great time with students from our campus!
Some of the coolest things happen when its 2am. I have gotten to know a girl pretty well over the last few weeks on campus, and she had gotten to come on the retreat. The room where Vince and I were staying was having some problems with the shower draining, and so on Sat at 1am after the hoedown, I walked over to the girls bunks to borrow their shower. On my way, I ran into this sweet girl, and she was sitting alone outside. We got a chance to talk for the next hour about things that were going on in her life, and I got to challenge her to pursue Christ, and to allow Him to carry her burdens. It was a really wonderful conversation, and if we had not been on Fall Retreat, up crazy late, and had a shower that didn't drain, I would probably not have gotten the opportunity to have that conversation! Shortly after, I showered so fast, and fell sound asleep from exhaustion, but it was 100% worth the late night to get a chance to invest in this sweet woman's life!
Thanks for your prayers for the weekend! We are so encouraged by what God is doing, and literally we feel so blessed to be part of it!
Thanks guys!

Home again!

Just got back from fall retreat this weekend, and we have lots of cool stories to share about what we did, and the cool things the Lord taught us and our students!
Also, we had a really cool event that happened Sunday night with the Greek girls on campus, and we can't wait to share more about it with you! Check back tomorrow for the story!

Bible study success

One thing we have been excited for this semester is the success of small group bible studies that us and our students have started. There are something like 10 of them (by my head count) that have gotten off the ground so far, but there is just one that I wanted to tell you about.
There are two girls that have recently became involved with us who have a huge heart for the Lord and a passion to see people trust in Christ. They have a small group that is full of freshmen which meets weekly in a dorm on campus, and that group has grown now to 16 girls attending.
This past week after a study on Ephsians ch. 2, where Paul lays our for us our brokenness, and what God has done for us so that we can have a relationship with Him, these two girls invited anyone who hadn't personally recieved Christ, and who had questions about how to do that to stay afterwards and chat. They had 4 girls stay after and pray to recieve Christ into their lives! I also heard there were two others who were seriously considering the true Gospel for the first time. We are so pumped for those 4 girls who have moved from eternal darkness to eternal life, and we are pround of our two students leaders who step out in faith to boldly proclaim the Gospel!

Day at the Lake

Friday afternoon, we took freshman and transfer students out to Lake Nacogdoches to have a great time together, and to get a chance to get to know each other. We were so blessed by friends who shared their beautiful lake house and boat, and another who brought their boat too! The group, around 35 students and staff, had a great time swimming, relaxing on the dock and boats, wakeboarding, and tubing. Then we all came in for a great cookout, and a had the new students get into focus/discussion groups where they talked about life and faith. It was a really fun afternoon and night, and we got a chance to develop awesome relationships with new students who are getting involved in our ministry.

   

Talking Tonight!

My amazing husband is giving the message tonight  at CRU. If you think about it, say a prayer for him, and the students who are going to come and get to hear the Gospel and how they can follow Christ with their life! Thanks friends! 

Have you Heard?

The statistics are staggering, and the truth is heart-breaking.

In a new article from CNN, more and more students are claiming religion, and not having a real and personal relationship with Christ! Please take a minute to read the article, it is worth your time!  Author: More teens becoming 'fake' Christians by John Blake

 

We are so thankful to get to help students to see what having a real relationship with Christ is like! And the challenge them to live a radical life for Christ, not just to buy into the mindset of “God will make me rich and happy.”

Our lives have been changed by the meat and potatoes of Christianity, and we are so happy to serve meat and potatoes rather than cake!!

Thanks for helping! We LOVE seeing students hearts changed for a lifetime of knowing and following Christ!

-Autumn

Bad Day Turns Amazing!

Hey, its Autumn! I was headed up to campus last week, and honestly I was kind of in a bad mood. I was supposed to be meeting with a new girl to share with her more info about CRU and how to have a personal relationship with Christ, and for various reasons she was not able to make it. I was heading up to Starbucks on campus to try and meet her, and she was not able to come. But as I walked up to the cafe, this is what I saw…

This may not look like anything to you, but allow me to explain! These two guys from out leadership team were hanging out on campus in their free time, trying to get into conversations with students and to share the Gospel with them! Unprompted! A little while back we shared with you about a cool tool that we use to get into spiritual conversations with people called Soularium. To read more about it, check out our previous post, or the Soularium website.

The thing that turned my day around was students desiring to share the Gospel with their peers, and strangers on campus!

In fact, I sat and talked with one of our students, and while we talked for a minute, he politely interrupted so that he could ask 3 students walking by if they wanted to take the survey, and after the survey if they wanted to know how to have a personal relationship with Christ, and the 3 students wanted to hear the Gospel, and praise the Lord they heard! And not only did they share with the 3 students I witnessed, they had shared with another 5 students earlier in the day!

It is so fantastic to see students get it! Students investing in students for eternity!

Praise the Lord!

Semester is on its way!

This semester has started off great. Autumn and I seem to hardly have any time to take a break and catch our breath, so we are excited for having nothing tying us down this weekend. I just wanted to hop on here and share about how much we've seen the Lord work this past week and a half on campus.
As I mentioned in the previous blog we had recieved a ton of contact cards from random events. I don't have the exact count but between Autumn and I, I would say that we had atleast 45-50 appointments with some of those students in the last week or so, and thats not counting the appointments our staff team and students had. Just to paint the picture of what I mean when I say appointment...it goes like this...
We set up the appt for 20-30 minutes with a student, spend some time getting to know them and hear about thier life. Share with them about Cru, and turn the conversation into a spiritual one. Then through a couple different questions that I ask everyone I meet with ( "0%-100% how sure are you that you would go to heaven if you died today?" and..."so now your standing before God, and He asks you "why should I let you into Heaven"...what do you say?"). Based on the answer, which is depressingly almost always wrong, we then share the Gospel with them using some great tools, and give them the opportunity to place thier faith in Christ, or maybe help them understand what they say they already believe.
It's just been a great start to the year, by my head count I'd say us, our students, and staff have probably shared the Gospel with over 250 people, including the SFA Cru record 95 people we saw at our first meeting. We have also seen 8 people pray on the spot to receive Christ and had numerous others leave seriously considering the Gospel.
Great start, and we are excited to see what God will do with the uncoming weeks. Hopefully we can get a more detailed update soon, but I thought I'd just do that scatter shot for now!

Welcome Week!

Starting last Thursday at 10 am was the crazy awkwardness of freshmen moving into SFA for their first time. Statistics show that in the first 6 weeks of school %80 of freshmen will be open to hearing that Gospel, after those 6 weeks the percentage drop dramatically so that by the end of the school year only 20% are open to hearing the Gospel. Is God bigger than these stats? Oh yeah. Should still still plan according to the info we have? Definitely.

So, when hundreds of freshmen roll up on the first day possible we are there to say hi, and give them a helping hand. It is a great time for us because our existing students show up with servants hearts, knowing that they are going to be helping a students hoping to start a relationship where we can share with them about Jesus. Move in went great, we met some sharp students who we were able to invite to the rest of our welcome week events.

That Thursday night we had our first actual event. We called it Cru Coffeehouse. We set up tables in the middle of campus and 9pm that night, and the girls did a great job of creating a coffee ambience feeling. Starbucks donated to us some very delicious and very free coffee which we handed out to the mostly freshmen students who came to hang out.

As with every event we do, we have every students fill out what we call a “contact card”, or basically a survey, in order to participate in whatever is happening. The survey is their contact info and two questions; “Would you like more info about Campus Crusade?”, and “Would you like more info about how to have a personal relationship with God?”. If they say yes to either, then we have a golden ticket to get together with them, get to know them, and give them an opportunity to respond to the Gospel.

Cru Coffeehouse was a great success. It was first night for students to move in, class didn’t start til Monday, and we got 65 contacts to share the Gospel with.

Friday night we piggybacked some other events going on that night on campus, and set up a place for students to get some free ice cream. We are really creative and called it…”Free Ice Cream". God uses this stuff to bring people from eternal darkness to eternal light….amazing. 75+ contacts easily.

Saturday night we tried something new. We had SFA Longest Game of Knockout, in the rec center. Knock out is a basketball game where you shoot from the free throw line and try to get the person out in front of you. To be honest, it wasn’t as big as we thought, but still had 40 people show up. 40 contact cards.

 

Sunday we were a part of multiple groups who hosted a BBQ in the middle of Campus, no contact cards allowed for us, but a great to to meet and connect with incoming students.

Monday morning, first day of class, the campus is hopping and busy. We set up a station and handed out Freshmen Survival Kits (FSK’s) for contact cards. An FSK is a laundry bag with a Bible, bottle, and a flyer in it. Freshmen love it. We handed out 250 FSK’s. AKA 250 more people to share the Gospel with.

So you do the math that's a lot of people. We spread out the cards to staff and students and began to set up tons of appt for this week. I’m going to let Autumn tell you how our first day of appts turned our but just as a teaser it rhymes with “swirls crusting in sliced”…yes I’m aware that's not even a sentence

Roundtable meeting.

Well summer is officially over and school has cranked back up here in Nac. We have been sooo busy since we started staff meeting a week and a half ago.

It has been three years since we have been on campus for the beginning of the fall, which was the first fall semester after Autumn and I were married. The Lord has brought us through, and provided for us so much in the last 2 years to have us on campus for this semester, and we are so thrilled and blessed to be here.

We kicked off the year last Tuesday  with a meeting with all of our leadership students, for which we call the “Roundtable”.  It was a very productive meeting which resulted in everyone leaving pumped for what God would do through us this year.

We talked extensively on being outward focused as one of our goals for the year. We planned discipleship for our students, and committed to setting aside our social schedules to pour into the freshmen, and go beyond just making the new student feel wanted, and to making them accepted and caring for them.

We also talked about how we could best serve the students involved with us and how we wanted to operate as if we flipped the traditional business model (the boss is in charge of managers who are in charge of employees who are in charge of others employees etc…). We wanted to make sure that us are staff aren’t their boss, and that they don’t feel like they are better, or in charge of the rest of Cru, rather that us as staff are at the bottom serving and enabling our leadership students to server and enable the students in Cru to reach their peers for Christ.

We also planned Bible Studies for we we are starting our with 7 on campus studies, which is very exciting! I don’t remember having this many trying to be started ever.

Great meeting, but when Thursday finally came around the talking stopped and it was time to get to work!…

Summer Project in Branson- Check it out!

After all the summer project posting we want to give you one easy way to access the stories you are looking for about our Summer Project in Branson. Just click on what you would like to read more about!!

First day move in

It will all be OK!

Glimpse into the Honey

OLSP video!

Soul to Soul

Man soul to soul, and growth teams

Summer Project Slideshow

Everyday life in Branson

Women’s Time

A-Days

Just Whistle While You Work…

Weekly Men’s Time

Servant Teams

Outreach

Being Social

Monday Night Live!

Growth Teams and Discipleship

Women’s Retreat

Men’s Retreat

Turning the project over

Saying Goodbye

Saying Goodbye

How do say goodbye to people that you have shared life with, nonstop, for the past 9 weeks? The Lord really blessed us with an amazing group of people this summer, and we could not have been more thankful. After we handed over the project to our students, it was really exciting, but we new that our time together was drawing to a close. As a way to close our time together, the students hosted a Staff Banquet to honor the staff as we were leaving. This was a really significant night because the students got a chance to share things the Lord had taught them, and how God had used the staff to impact their life this summer. It was a really emotional night of saying our goodbyes.  After the banquet was over my girls from my growth team and I went to Wendy’s and shared fries and Frosty’s. We were all talking and laughing and remembering all the sweet moments from the weeks we just spent together. We headed back to the Honey and prayed together in a huddle for a long while, crying and knowing how much we were going to miss each other, but excited for what was still to come for the students who were going to stay for 4 more weeks. Saying goodbye was so hard! We already had the car loaded, and so at 5 the next morning we gave our final hugs and started the trek home. Which was really sad, and we were really tired, but it was worth every minute.

Vince and I at the BanquetAutumn’s Growth Team, together one last night!!Vince’s growth team guys honoring him during the Banquet.

 

And thats it guys! That was our summer project in a really long nutshell! Hope you enjoyed hearing about it as much as we enjoyed being part of what God was doing with students from around the country in Branson, MO.

 

We love you OLSP!!!

Turning the project over

When the time came for us staff to leave we had a lot of hard decisions to make. All of the roles that they staff were overseeing had to be filled.

There was the project director, asst director, mens and womens leader, and leaders for each growth team, and servant team. For staff we shared the responsibilities, but before we left we had to carefully appoint students to take over these roles.

This was a multi week process we went over as staff, but in the end we were extremely pleased with the students we left in charge.

The night we turn over the project, and hand the keys over to the students (literally) was a very special night. We had been training these students all summer, and it was time for the to step in and step up.

We had a really cool ceremony at night out by the picnic tables. There were a few tiki torches lit, and us staff stood in front of the students holding flags that represented the things they had been learning. Dan, our director called up and introduced the students director, asst director, and their two assistants. We then prayed over them and immediately left to go get ice cream, and the new director announced the new students leaders we picked out for the rest of the project.

It was a powerful night, and a challenging and scary night for some of the students. The project went very smoothly after we left, and it felt great to see the training we gave pay off.

Men’s Retreat

On the same weekend the women had their shindig, us men retreated to eastern Arkansas to do manly things, and bond with each other under the Lord.

The first greatness of this retreat was the location. We stayed in a giant house/cabin that held almost all our guys, about 50 yards from the water where the White River, and the Norfork River combine. Aka one of the best Rainbow trout fishing that can be had. Also, from sun down to a few hours after sun up, there was an awesome mist on the water which made it easily 20 degrees cooler.

The man things we did included alot of fishing. We caught, cleaned, and fried over 100 fish on Saturday. We had arm wrestling, and jalapeño eating contests. There were random other wrestling occurrences. A few guys opted to sleep outside for the heck of it. We built a fire and covered ourselves in mud.

There were alot of fun things, but what happened that was most important was that the guys were connected to the Lord. They each made commitments that we take very seriously, about a lifestyle that the Lord has called us to now, and in the future. It was a really cool man scene that night with fire and everything when the guys made these commitments. 

Us as staff also took the opportunity to serve the guys in our growth teams by mimicking an example Jesus gave, as we washed their feet. As we washed their feet was affirmed them in who they are in Christ, and what kind of men they are. It was an amazing scene.

The weekend also included a number of other sessions about mentors, and some other stuff, but the weekend was a great time, and one of the best men’s retreat that i have ever been a part of.

Women’s Retreat

What a fun way to spend a long weekend! We took off for a Friday-through-Sunday chocolate-eating, late-night-pajama-parting, painting-fingernails, and all-things-girly celebration! Oh, and getting to hear more about how God created us as women as a unique part of His creation, and how He designed with specific personalities that we can use for His glory!  These great women talked about friendship!

They have a long long and sweet friendship and it is neat to see how God has taught them things along the way, and that they can entrust that to us!

There were pedicures,

and a dance party,

and a little shopping,

Time together learning about how God created us and gave us different personalities. Which really helped me sooo much, and I highly recommend.

And we got a chance to publically honor all the girls in our growth team in front of the rest of the girls. This was such a special time of realizing the way God made each one of us special and for a purpose!

It was a fantastic weekend with the Lord, and with the girls! I loved it!

Growth Teams and Discipleship

Every week we got the privilege of meeting with our growth teams, which was a small group of 4-5 students. In addition to investing in them in the small group setting, we also met individually with the students in our growth team weekly. This was hands down my favorite part of the entire summer, and we had a GREAT summer. The girls I got to meet with were fantastic, FANTASTIC! From the beginning with our Soul to Souls, these girls stole my heart with their vulnerability, openness, teachability, and their desire to walk with the Lord. I wish you could know these girls. Every week for growth team time we went back to the Chateau at the Lake and got to sit in squishy chairs and spend time in the Word and in prayer. Then throughout the week I got to sit down with the girls one on one, and it was so awesome to get to know specifically what they were experiencing, and to challenge them to grow in their faith. There is something unique and special about sitting down with a person, and finding out where they are spiritually, and challenging them to take their walk with Christ to a deeper level. I saw girls who were hungry for the Word, who wrote verses on their arm so they could memorize it at work, and kept little memory verses in their pocket, who desired to have God honoring relationships, to help their friends back home to know Christ, to step out in boldness and actually share the gospel. The list could go on and on because these girls really grasped what it looked like to follow Jesus. Were they perfect? Of course not! But they chose to dig in and invest in Jesus, and to seek the eternal. It was a blessing to invest in them! 

Monday Night Live!

Monday Night Live was said for some people to be their favorite time of the week. Monday Night Live, or MNL, was our weekly meeting for the summer.

The purpose of MNL was to kick the week off right, with Christ, and His mission on our minds. MNL was also a form of evangelism because it was a place where our students could invite their co-workers, and the people the met during outreach to hear more about how they can have a relationship with Christ, and grow in their faith.

The whole night was run by our students, except for the staff doing the talks, but after we left our students leadership picked up right where we left off. We had a student led worship team who did and excellent job.

We had students handling the sounds and audio. And a team of students who handled the theme of the night, and who did a great job of welcoming people.

Then afterwards we’d basically all take over Steak and Shake.

Being Social

Our students worked so hard this summer. They had their jobs during the day, and then we loaded up their schedule every other time. So, the socials on Saturday Night were always greatly looked forward to.

These purpose of the socials were two fold. One, we wanted to give the students a break, and a chance to let loose and just have fun. Two, this was a great time for them to just focus on building a relationship with each other, and strengthening the bond of the project.

We had alot of goofy socials such a Tacky Bowling Night, Staff Hunt, Decades Rollerskating, Old-Fart Bingo, and a few others that took place after the staff left. Here some visual examples...

Tacky Bowling night

Decades Skating….what decade? i dont know…

Outreach

Before students came on Summer Project, the thought of doing outreach was exciting and terrifying at the same time, and the students longed to be able to know how to share their faith. These are actual quotes from the applications for Project from this summer’s group:

“Taking the initiative in evangelism is not the most comfortable thing to do. Jesus left us here with the Great Commission, and shoot, I’m going to do it.”

“I have not had much experience with evangelism, but there is no better way to spread Jesus’ love then telling people ourselves. It is so important to take the initiative to tell people about Jesus. I want to feel confident enough to do that. I think summer project would be a good opportunity to grow in that area.”

“I also really want to learn how to effectively share my faith. It’s something I’ve been nervous about doing but have always wanted to do.”

“It is actually one of my goals to be able to share my faith and witness. I have always been afraid to do so, and I have decided that this year, my goal is to get rid of insecurities of speaking out loud about Jesus.”

“I don’t know much about evangelism and that’s one of the reasons why I want to go on this project.”

This summer, outreach wasn’t just something that we did one day a week, it was a lifestyle. But in addition, we did focus our attention on sharing the Gospel during one day of the week. Every Saturday, after room cleaning, we had outreach time. It was something that the students really wanted, but they were also really scared to do. 

The outreaches really helped students to understand why in the world that we do evangelism. One student in particular, she came on project feeling apathetic about sharing her faith., Even on the first day of outreach, she held back and didn’t want to participate. The next Saturday, she and another girl got into a conversation with a group of mom’s and their little girls at the mall. While they were talking about spiritual things, the women kept answering the questions with “I just don’t know” and “I have never thought about that.” When we all returned to the Honey to debrief, the student got up and shared about her interaction with the women, and how the Lord had really broken her hardened heart. She was crying and saying, “these people just don’t know… they just don’t know about Jesus and what He has done for them.” This marked a significant step for our student, and she began to be passionate about sharing her faith, not only on Saturday outreach times, but in her workplace and with new people she met. 

Another guy had never really shared he faith before, and one Saturday he began to pray for God to open the door and let him have a great spiritual conversation. A few minutes later he was sharing Christ with a man, who prayed to receive Christ! The man had just moved to Branson recently and had to leave his family to find work. During his time in the new city, he began to realize his brokenness, but didn’t know what to do about it.  God had set a divine appointment for the two to meet, and we now have a new brother in Christ!

It was really cool to see God open the hearts of our students and challenge then to step outside of their comfort zone and actually share the Gospel. And thankfully, there are so many more stories of lives that were changed and new people placing their faith in Christ because of our students following the Lord and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and direct them! Praise the Lord!

Also, Tuesday nights we had an open dinner night where students invited anyone they met to come and eat a free meal, and 3-4 students shared their testimony and the gospel. These nights were always my favorite dinners because it was so fun to see the picnic tables packed out with people who were getting to hear the gospel. Some were co-workers, some were children, some were homeless, some were people who had trusted Christ the summer before because of students on that Summer Project. Regardless, it was just another way to see God’s faithfulness to being all these people together to share a meal, and to hear the best news they could ever hear.