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.

Servant Teams

While on project one of the great things we did in addition to training our students to share their faith, was how to have a ministry of their own. One of the ways we did this was to put each of the students in a Servant Team where they could best use their talents and interests to serve the Lord by serving the project and the community. There were eight Servant Teams which they could serve.

Outreach Team – This team was in charge of putting together all of our Saturday outreaches where we’d go to specific places in town and share the Gospel. They’d organize everything from the location, to the tools we’d use, to the training needed for each tool. These day’s will be highlighted later on.

Social Team – Our students worked so hard all week long at work and with everything else we put on their plate. Saturday night was fun night! The social team was in charge of these night which were key in building the community of the project, and keeping everyone relaxed. This is the group that Autumn lead, and she did a great job!

 

MNL – Every Monday night we had something we called Monday Night Live (MNL). This was our weekly meeting where we’d have worship, skits, and a speaker. This was the night that our students would be able to invite their co-workers and people they meet during outreach to further building their relationship, and share who Christ is with them. This team was in charge of everything. Vince was in charge of this group.

Men’s and Women’s time – We had weekly men’s and women’s times every week, The students in charge of this arranged the events, skits, and the staff did the talks. When the staff left, these students became in charge of the content too.

Hotel Team – These guys had a tough job. They were in charge of maintenance. Fixing toilets, fixing lights, painting tables, mowing the grass. They also had the tough job of judging the rooms on cleaning day and declaring winners. They were very important to the cleanliness of our project.

Video team – These students worked hard all summer filming events and putting together videos that we can use in the future to recruit people to project.

A-team – No, Mr. T wasn’t in Branson this summer, this was the team in charge of planning our adventure days on Fridays, and planning the spiritual content that goes along with it.

Staff were in charge of all of these while we were there, and the students got valuable experience leading them on their own.

Weekly Men’s Time

Every Wednesday night was one of my favorite times of the week. It was men’s and women’s time….more specifically since Vince is writing this, I loved men’s time.

The location was the first cool thing about men’s time. It was held every Wednesday night at a local ministries facility called, Doulos (doo-loss), which is a wonderful place for people struggling with addictions and many other confidential struggles to go and be loved on and counseled. Anyways, they had a volleyball court and an outdoor basketball court which is where men’s time started every week. One thing I like about being a guy is that we tend to bond with other guys through competition. So this was a great time for our guys to have some fun and bond a little bit.

After b-ballin and v-ballin we’d take it to their indoor facility for some man specific content, which was lead by the project director, Dan Boone. Alot of what went on in there was very “manly” and I’m not gonna write about that, but the spiritual content was very challenging, and I saw men’s live change through having them challenged in these specific area’s.

Basically we emphasized the importance of these men to reject passivity, lead courageously, accept responsibility, and expect God’s greater reward for their lives. There is a lot to unpack there, but as we did over 5 weeks, I saw our guys have a changed outlook on life, as they were challenged to be a man of God in such a way that they had never been before

Just Whistle While You Work…

It isn’t that they didn’t have a full schedule already, because they did. And it isn’t that they “just needed the money” because they were OK without it. And it wasn’t that they were super excited to add these jobs to the formal resume, because you will not find them there. Our students worked this summer while they were on Project to serve, and to share the gospel!

Our 52 students spread out all over Branson to work, and in doing so to love on the community, and share with them about the Lord. Where did they work you ask?

Well 25 students worked under the golden arches in 7 different McDonalds in the city. Other students lifeguarded at a local indoor water park. A handful worked at Sonic, and another small group at Krispy Creme. Finally we had students working parking lot duty at the amusement park Silver Dollar City.

It was amazing to see how students were able to share and grow in their work environment, and to make a difference for eternity!

For each student, there is a story of how God opened their eyes to a hurting world, or how He allowed them to step out in faith and really trust Him.

For one of my girls, even getting a job was a huge step of faith! This summer she worked her very first job, and it was at McDonalds. For the first week, she was really not excited, very overwhelmed by the training process, and not at all enjoying her job. She came back to the Honey so overwhelmed, and sometimes in tears, just feeling defeated. Not only that, but she was fearful about sharing her faith, and wondered how she would ever get to share in such a fast paced environment at work. But just over a week went by before she started allowing God to transform her heart and be excited to share the gospel. She became great friends with a co-worker, who was a atheist. For some reason, this girl just loved our student, and they began talking and texting, even after work! God used her to break down some thick walls in the life of the atheist coworker. A different afternoon, she met a customer in line, and even though it was busy, she got to share the gospel with the customer, and invited him to come to an outreach dinner. Crazy enough, he came! And he heard the gospel from other students, and got into a great spiritual conversation! God transformed a timid and fearful heart into a bold and confident woman who got the opportunity to share the gospel with countless customers and coworkers. I talked to her a few weeks ago at the end of her time in Branson, and she said the one of the hardest part of leaving was leaving the relationships she made at McDonalds. Talk about God powerfully transforming a heart!!! She can’t wait to put what she learned about living intentionally, and being bold in sharing her faith into practice back on campus in the fall!

And you just have to see how awesome they did at work!!

So fun right???

Praise the Lord for transformed lives as a result of these students stepping out in faith and following the Lord!

A-Days

On Summer Project, every Friday was an Adventure Day! ( I think we should make this part of normal life! don’t you??) The area of the country where Branson is located is really beautiful, and we are so fortunate as to get to see parts of it!

Fridays were a very welcome break in the schedule, even though we always had to wake up super-early to get to our destination!

Our first adventure day was canoeing. We traveled to a river in Arkansas and took a 9 mile, 5 hour canoe trip down a beautiful river. It was so amazing!   Here we are getting ready to go!Are these girls starting to look familiar? Well just in case they are not… they are my awesome growth team! And its kinda hard to see, but if you look to the far right on the rocks all of our students were climbing up to cliff dive, which made me hyperventilate. I can be such a kill joy…

It was great to get to enjoy God’s beautiful creation, and to have fun bonding time together!

The next A Day was called Project Olympics. We went out to a beautiful church and we were broken up into teams to compete during the day in various competitions. It was neat to see the students growing together, and even though it was intended to be a competitive day, students were building each other up and encouraging each other. We had staff and students teams- and here we are with our yellow team!   (And if you think that we look awesome… you are right! We rocked it! Ha!)Some of the fun competitions… And the whole gang of Olympians!

The next A-Day Friday was caving! We actually were not part of this trip since we were caring for some of our dear friends kids, while thier mom was in the hospital. She is doing fine now, and the students had a great time checking out caves, and swimming in the river!

The next weekend we were at the Men’s and Women’s retreat which we will fill you in on… But the following Friday the students had their first A-Day without staff and they went on a hiking adventure! This was not the finest A-Day. They hiked nearly 12 miles in super hot heat, on super steep mountains, and only had 1 water bottle each… but it was so cool to hear how God transformed bad attitudes! They hiked all day to see a big waterfall. And this is sadly what the big waterfall turned out to be… oh wait, can you barely see the water? me too. But they ended up having a good time none the less!

We had so much fun enjoying the beauty of God’s creation on these fun A-Days! The students had more once the staff team left- but I don’t have pictures of those for you- but you get the idea!

Thanks for looking, and seeing captures moments from the time we so thoroughly enjoyed on our Summer Project!

~Autumn

Women’s Time

Wednesday nights were always one of the highpoints of the week for me since we got to get together with all the girls, and just be women, and see how God values us as a unique part of His creation, and how we can serve him! We would all go to a room that looked like a big living room, and sink into huge comfy couches, and get to hear the Word from amazing women.

Ali Enos, our Assistant Project Director, lead women's time for us. We started each week with a fun icebreaker, and then we had story time.

Now that may sound a little strange for 25 college women, but it was so neat! Ali had the book, The Jesus Storybook Bible, and each week she picked a different story to read to the girls. Actually the Jesus Storybook Bible itself is amazing, even though it is written for children (obviously!), we all loved it! We had great discussion after each story and it was cool to see hearts being changed by something as simple as a children's story from the Bible. The really cool thing about this particular kids Bible is that every single story the author points to  Jesus, and that every story in the Bible is part of God’s plan for saving us by sending Jesus! Before we even went home from project most of the girls had ordered it for themselves, and I actually have a copy sitting on my nightstand! Now I know you want to order one too! But I digress…

After story time one of the staff women would share with us from the Word. The topics ranged from seeing that no one is perfect, but that God has redeemed us all, dealing with unmet longings, facing our fears, committing to purity, understanding God’s definition of beauty,and learning to be content. It was especially neat for the girls to get to hear from these particular staff women because these were the mom’s with kids, and they did not get to participate as much in all the rest of the activities we had. It was so cool to see the girls really responding to them, and to God’s truth they brought! Here is a fun picture of all the staff women, and in it are the mom’s who talked too!!

It was so much fun to get to spend some great quality time being women! It makes me want to go hang out with great Godly women right now!