Exciting week for our students...

This week is an exciting week for not only our students, but for us as staff. As a part of running our ministry on campus, and a part of training students to lead a ministy in "the real world" we have a team of students we have hand picked called the "Leadership Team".
This is something we've had in the past, and have put it back into place at the begining of this semester. Therefore we have had alot of training and learning. They are doing great!
This week we have put these students completely in charge of stuff. Tomorrow and Thursday they are running an outreach that they planned, and are carrying out. They are putting a basketball goal in the middle of campus and inviting students to shoots hoops for some prizes, after they fill out a short survey. Very simple, very good idea. They then are taking these short surveys, we call contact cards, and are calling through the students who indicate interest in meeting, to set up a time to meet, and share the Gospel with them. We are so excited to see them do this.
Also, if that wasn't enough, we gave them complete control of the weekly meeting. So Thursday night will be completely student ran. They found a speaker, organized the band, and the whole thing.
We are praying for them that it goes well, that they are encouraged by the things that God will do, and that they will be encouraged to grow in their leadership skills for the sake of the Gospel.

Spring Break 2010

Hope you have been enjoying a restful Spring Break, whenever yours is!

We have been having a great time visiting our families and Autumn’s roommate, and getting refreshed for the rest of the school year!

We have students traveling all over the place! Many are enjoying time with family- but we have a number of students who are sharing Christ on the beaches in Panama City, FL.  Here is an update for you that was given to us compliments of our staff webpage and author Laura Viau:

“Big Break is always an blast-between the speakers, the worship, and the beautiful Panama City beaches, you’d think it was just a retreat. The truth is that lives are changed every year. Students become bold witnesses, bringing men and women out of the darkness into relationship with the true Light of the World. In the past week alone, over 3600 gospel conversations took place and we know of 421 new sisters and brothers in Christ.

In addition to the sun, fun and sharing this year, Big Breakers also have a chance to give some time to help those in need in Haiti. Our goal is to pack A Million Meals for A Million People, which will be distributed with partner ministries in Haiti. So far, the “packing parties” during the first two weeks of Big Break have packed around 300,000 meals! In addition to the food, the meal packets will provide a gospel message in Haitian Creole.

Many of you are wondering how you can involve students and faculty members in reaching out to Haiti. Plans are firming up for summer projects, as well as ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts.

Want to track what’s happening in PCB? Check out the Twitter stream then jump in by including #bigbreak in your updates.”

Hope you enjoyed seeing how God was at work in the lives of college students in their Spring Break!

Props to an encouraging ministry...

This is Vince writing. I had a very interesting experience on Tuesday night. As I think we've mentioned before, God is begining to open doors for us in the Greek system here at SFA. This is very exciting for us. We are now developing relationships with guys and girls in 4 different major houses.
Our campus director, Scott, and I have really connected with one particular guy, named John, from one of the houses. John is a really cool guys who has some difficult things he is struggling with while wrestling with what God may have for his life. He has been sharing with us about his experience with God while attending something called Celebrate Recovery. He was telling us how the program had helped him overcome some issues in his life, and how he has started to attend again. He invited us to go with him to Celebrate Recovery, so this past Tuesday we drove with him to his home town to check things out.
Celebrate Recovery is a Christ based recovery program that helps people over come, and recover from a wide range of addictions such as: sexual, drugs, alcohol, co-dependancy, anxiety, basically you name it. I have heard from a couple of good friends about how great this is, and after attending one meeting I can emphatically agree.
This main things that stood out to me about Celebrate Recovery was how open, accepting, inclusive, and welcoming they are to everyone. I think one failing of the church is that people don't feel they can reveal some of thier deep hurts, and sins because if they did then they would feel akward, or to some extent look at like they don't belong. At CR this is something that they do right every week. In my experience there, it just didn't matter what you are dealing with. It could be almost unimaginable struggle, and the people at CR will welcome you in, lock arms, and say we are in this together. It's an amazing picture of how I believe Jesus would want His church to operate.
I would hope that if someone walked into my church, and for that matter, every Christ believing church, or even our ministry with Cru, and opened up that they were dealing with drug addiction, homo sexuality, or some deep dark hurt, that we would react with open arms and acceptance. I believe that we are challenged to lock arms and do life with these people as Jesus pulls them through thier sins. I think we need to break out of feeling like we need to continually act like everything is OK while we are at church, and make a movement towards open sharing, and total acceptance. Not acceptance of the sin being OK, but acceptance that they are in the right place to trust in Christ, and to make their and our lives look more like His.
I just wanted to through our there some props for a really cool ministry who is doing the hard things really well. Celebrate Recovery is changing lives, and helping people follow Christ while, fighting addictions. I would recommend this program to anyone dealing with addiction. CR is legit.

Ethiopia Here They Come!

Late Sunday night, I got a phone call from an awesome girl who is involved in our ministry. She was so excited that she just couldn't wait to tell me her news. She had just found out that she was going to be part of the Summer Project to Ethiopia this summer! In the few months before, I had gotten a chance to get to know this amazing girl. She has been excited about getting involved with Crusade- coming to the weekly meetings, hosting a Bible study in her dorm, and inviting friends to come and hear about Christ who changed her life. From the first time I met her, she talked about wanting to go to Ethiopia, and to share with college students there about the love of the Savior. Over the next weeks, she filled out her application, prayed, and waited to hear if she was going to get to be part of the trip. You can only imagine the excitement from the phone call she got letting her know that she was part of the group!

She will be joined with another amazing girl from SFA. She has also been involved in Cru, and has been coming to the weekly meetings, sharing with her friends about Christ, has started a Bible study for girls in her major of study, and is very vocal about how God has changed her life. She attended our Winter Conference in January on a whim, not at all expecting that God would give her such a heart for Ethiopia while she was there. During the conference, she attended a break-out session about the Summer Project to Ethiopia and in those moments in the session, she realized that  she had been putting herself first in how she made decisions, and God wanted her to put Him first- and she knew that meant sacrificing her personal summer agenda and serving instead in Ethiopia. In a big step of faith, she filled out the application, was accepted, and is beginning a faith journey of raising funds and heading to Ethiopia.

Please be praying for these 2 wonderful SFA girls who are going to be spending a chunk of their summer sharing Christ with students in Bahadar, Ethiopia.

• Pray for the money they need to raise to do this mission trip
• Pray for the other 14 students from different campus's going to Ethiopia
• Pray that God will be preparing the students going, and the students they are going to be sharing Christ with while they are there.

We are so excited for them, and proud of their steps of faith in following Christ with their lives!

Greeks...

Hi there! This past weekend was my brothers wedding! Autumn and I had a nice time getting my brother and our new sister n law hitched, and getting to visit with a bunch of friends and special people we only get to see a few times a year.
We have a very good friend of ours at the wedding kindly reminded us about our blog, and we realize we've dropped the ball updating here, have set aside time to make sure we get some stuff up on here for you guys.
A couple monday's ago Scott, a guy on our staff team, and I went and spoke to a particular fraternity in an attempt to meet some guys who would be interested in getting with us and possibly starting a small group with them. That experience was intimidating to say the least. Well, after meeting with a half a dozen or so guys we had the first small group Bible study tonight.
The night went very well. We had 3 guys show up, and while this may sound like not many, this is huge. They are 3 really cool guys who, have alot of things going on in life, and are trying to figure out where God fits it. We had a great time talking about life, and looking as John chapter 2 discussing Jesus's first miracle, and how we can live our lives differently because of it.
This is a huge win for us, and we continue to pray for God to use us to reach the extremely hard to reach Greek system at SFA for Christ. We can't wait to see this small movement grow.

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.