Kick off Week

This has been a really exciting week and we are reminded again how thankful we are to be able to be here in Nacogdoches doing ministry! Around here, classes started on Wednesday, and so we have been in full planning mode for the past weeks leading up to now.
Tuesday, we started things off by having a free lunch for students who were back on campus. We were able to meet alot of new students, and get in some good conversations, and we are really looking forward to getting together with the students that we met during the event. Later that afternoon we met with our Roundtable students, which are our student leadership team. It was so encouraging to see students who are extremely passionate about reaching their peers at SFA for Christ. We got a chance to challenge them, and to help them think through creative ways to share Christ on campus, and to help other students grow in their relationship with Christ. These students are so awesome, and they are already so special to us.
Wednesday marked the official first day of classes and we remembered just how thankful we are to not be going to class! But really, it was an awesome day to be able to meet lots of students. We were on campus, and doing some surveys to see spiritual interest- and to get a chance to follow up with students who indicated they were interested in knowing more about our Christ, a Bible study, or Crusade. Praise the Lord that out of the 100+ students we met Wed. afternoon, many circled they were interested in finding out more about it all! We are already starting to call these students and to get together to talk with them more, and share about Christ.
Thursday was much the same as Wednesday- students were going to their 2nd day of first classes, and it was another great day to meet students during lunch time surveys. In addition, we had our first Crusade weekly meeting of the semester! This semester at our Cru meeting in addition to challenging students to know and follow God, we are wanting to introduce them to praying for, and serving students with out campus partnership with a college campus in Ethiopia. The night was a success, and we had lots of new faces, and a chance to impact new lives. Part of me just wanted to pinch myself, to remind myself that this is real, and that after a year+ of desiring to be here serving, that this is finally real. What an awesome answer to prayer.

Please continue to pray for us and our staff team as we are meeting individually with the students that we met this week: both at the free lunch we hosted, and from the surveys we did throughout the week.
Pray that God would prepare hearts, and that students would come to a saving relationship as a result of Christ at work in their life!
Pray also for us as we are beginning to disciple students. Pray for wisdom as we plan, and that we would be able able to model following Christ, and being authentic. We desire to have students look more like Jesus, and we pray that we can point them to the Lord.
Thanks for being part of this journey with us...

winter conference notes...
Each year our region with Crusade which is TX, Arkansas, OK, and LA has a Winter Conference for our students in the Dallas area. This year it was in a hotel on the Sundance Square in ft worth.
We sent out a whole prayer letter about the conference so I'm not going to detail it here. There was one thing not in the letter that I wanted to share that touched me, and I think will encourage you in sad but still encouraging way.
First off there was about 550 students in attendance which brought alot of energy to the morning and evening meetings. The speakers did a great job in my opinion, and the camera guys were flawless (camera guy was my job). The main things spoken on was forgiveness, prayer, and using your life as a ministry. The students were encouraged to not only seek and recieve forgiveness from the Lord, but to also forgive the hurts done to you by others. Also, they were encouraged to big meaningful prayer. Being in such a place during prayer where you could focus and know you are talking to God! They were also encouraged to pray with a big picture and to look beyond thier own life circumstances. Finally, they were encouraged to give thier future up to the Lord, and use whatever future they had to have a ministry.
Ok...so all of the talks were awesome but my point is this. When you walk into Church and look around everyone seems happy, in attendance, and pretty much like they have things together, or whatever. Well thats basically what you'd percieve from the student crowd at Winter Conference. A hyper bunch of kids with the world at thier finger tips and no cares at all.
Well during the last night's meeting we did something different. No speaker, just worship songs. The twist was that starting at the begining of the meeting the MC posed a few questions regarding what God was doing in thier lives with prayer, then a couple songs later about thier life plans, then a couple songs later about forgiveness, and the students would respond by texting in thier answers and those would then by streamed live on the screens in the room.
Let me tell you, the large group of happy students opened up, and deep hurt came rolling out. Students texted things like...
"i forgive my father for leaving, i've hated him for so long"
"i forgive my brother for the death or my other brother, i know its not his fault"
"i am praying for the man who sexually abused me"
"i am prayer that my campus would come to know the Lord"
"i need to forgive myself for what i did in iraq"
I promise i can go on and on just from memory.
I think that alot of people who are believers even, the person sitting next to you in church, your nieghbor, they all have deep wounds in thier lives that are being hidden by a front. I just think its important to be aware that the outer appearance its always what going on inside. But the Lord wants to heal those wounds and fill that void.