Preparing for Ethiopia

As many of you already know, this summer Autumn and I are leading a team of 15 students to Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. We will be partnering with the Campus Crusade Ethiopian naitonals over there to share the Gospel with the students at the University in Bahir Dar.
Also, there are a number of new believers in Ethiopia who are willing to be leaders for Christ, but who have no training. It's my understanding that if you have gone to church for more that 6 months in you life, then you are qualified to pastor in Ethiopia. In light of this, we will also be training Ethiopians how to share thier faith, how to walk in the Spirit, and how to teach these things and other foundational principles to thier fellow Ethiopians.
We are at the point in out process where we are accepting applications from students from around the US, and evaluating and building our team.
We ask that you would pray that the Lord would give us wisdom in these decisions, and that we would take a team of mature believer who are willing to take bold steps to share thier faith in Africa. Thanks!

Back into the action!

Well the spring semester has started and we are 2 and a half weeks in. We are so encouraged by what God is doing in the lives of students. It is always interesting to see how students who attended the Winter Conference respond to the life changing week, and how they choose to live differently back at school. The biggest result of this that we have seen so far is at our outreaches.
On Monday and Friday afternoon we invite our students to meet us in the Students Center so that we can spend some time sharing our faith. We look to use some of the great tools that Crusade has for us, that help us begin a conversation with a random person, and turn that conversation into a spiritual one where, when to Spirit leads, we give them the opportunity to place thier faith in Christ.
Last semester's outreachs were great, we sometimes had even around 10 students show up. However this semester, almost everyone from Winter Conference is showing up. we are having upwards of 18-20 people show up to share with others about who Jesus is and how they can have a relationship with God!!
We are so excited and encouraged by this. After 4 days of outreach Autumn and I have probably shared the Gospel with 9-10 people and I was venture a guess that altogether our students have shared the Gospel or initiated a spiritual conversation with well over 30 people.
We rejoice in those numbers, but we measure our success by how often we step out in faith to begin a conversation with the purpose of sharing the Gospel, while leaving the results up to God.

Ready for Winter Conference

Autumn and I are all checked in and ready for the students to arrive at the hotel for Winter Conference this year! We arrived last night and worked til around 11 setting up.
We are expecting 30 students from SFA and 750 students from our region! The arrive today at 3pm and the conference goes thru the 5th. Please pray that the Lord would lead and guide this conference, and that we would move in the hearts of the students in mighty and life changing ways. We look forward to getting you more details later on!

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!