Standing in Awe.

Hello everyone! It's absolutely insane that I've been here in NMB for four weeks already! I feel much more settled now that I have been working at my job for about three weeks and am used to the schedule. Sadly, the staff leave next Saturday and the project will be run by students! At first this was a scary thought, but I came to realize that because of our common purpose and heart for Christ, we will grow even more during the last five weeks of project than we did the first five. I am really excited for the opportinity for us to step up and lead!

Last week's theme was All for One, which meant the focus was on building our project community to make it stronger and more unified. This involved a confusing week of the staff not telling us anything! We had to find out everything from students and also couldn't use facebook or texting to communicate details about events that were going on. Although at times confusing, this week was a great reminder of how important it is to be relational and intentional with people. We ended the week last Saturday with playing a game of softball; staff versus students. The staff has won for the past fifteen years, but we came in close with only a four run loss! The game was a bit quarky, though, in that we first approached the diamond and were sent back and told to come back more unified. The staff would also change the rules as we went based on things that we did well and poorly during the week. We played a super fun, entertaining game of softball! I even hit the ball!

The past week's theme has been on having a heart for the nations. We kicked off the week during our Sunday meeting by learning about the desperate need for Christ around the world. For example, a country like Argentina has 180 people for every Christian. In many countries there are millions of people and absolutely no Christians at all. My heart broke for the unreached. I realized, looking at my own heart, that so much of the time I live my life like I don't care about the gospel. I realized that thinking about these things shouldn't be an occasional time of emotional experience; I need to change my perspective. And by perspective I mean that I need to see life as it truly is; short and just not  about myself. As nice as it is to enjoy my life and desire success, that's not why I'm here. We have, what, 70, 80, 90 years on earth? And then eternity. Eternity! This word just doesn't seem to sink in how I want it to. If it did I don't think I'd question so much IF I should share based on my own comfort or desire, because I would be asking "how could I NOT be sharing right now?" How can we not be moved toward action when facing a world filled with lost and dying people? My moment of discomfort or nervousness is worth a person being able to spend forever with Jesus.

This was my realization on Sunday. Fast forward 24 hours and my friend Andrea and I are on the beach playing guitar together. A guy and a girl soon pass by and ask us to play them a song, so Andrea plays them one she wrote. They thanked us and kept on their way. About ten minutes later they stopped by again and began talking with us. Taylor was going to be a junior in high school and Matt was 17 but going into the Marines. We began talking with them and told them about what we are doing here this summer. Micah (from our project) also walked up a few minutes later and joined in the conversation. Matt asked me what my favorite Bible verse is and then told me his. Micah then asked Matt, "So have you had much spiritual background?" Matt replied "Yeah, I've grown up in church so I've definitely heard a lot of it. I have no idea what happens after people die and we get to the gates of heaven, though. What do you think happens?" Needless to say, we went on to share the enitre gospel with the two, and they were extremely responsive and receptive! They are hopefully going to come to the weekly meeting tomorrow as well. I thought it was amazing how God really doesn't need us; He brought Matt and Taylor to us twice and had them initiate a spiritual conversation. God allows us to be his hands and feet and mouth because He loves us.

One last story. Today I went out sharing with my discipler, Mandy (who is an incredible and beautiful lady, by the way!). We approached a group of five and got to share the gospel with them! We also talked with another group of three girls. They were very sweet and receptive; one was agnostic and they others very curious. We gave them the survey and eventually got to share the gospel with them as well! At the end I asked them if they desired to know God personally, to which one of the girls said, "Yes! 100%!" I was honored to pray with her as she invited Jesus in to her life.

A song by Leeland reminds me of this week:

This is an emergency! There are tears from the saints for the lost and unsaved; we're crying for them come back home. And all your children will stretch out their hands and pick up the crippled man.
Father, we will lead them home.  

Hey all! Sorry it has been a little while; the past week or so has been great, but very busy! I started my job last Monday and worked 6 days in a row. This is a bit exhausting since we also have many other Project activities in the evenings. However, God definitely sustained me!

The theme of last week was "Killing You Giants." We based the theme on the seemingly impossible story of David and Goliath. We looked at all the lies we let ourselves believe, such as that "people won't want to hear about Jesus," that "I don't know enough to share the gospel,"that "I don't have time to go sharing," or "no one will respond to what we have to say," and decided not to believe them. We each made personal goals of how many gospel conversations we want to have and how many times we want to share the gospel during that week; my goals were 15 gospel initiations and 5 gospel presentations. It being Senior Week (when all the high school seniors come to party for the week), we had the perfect opportunity to share with students a bit younger than us. What I really wanted was to be able to share the Knowing God Personally (KGP) booklet that explains the gospel because I haven't been able to do that while sharing as of yet.

I went out sharing last Wednesday during the beautiful South Carolina evening for our outreach night with my friend Laura. We walked along the beach that night, praying specifically that God would allow us to be able to share the KGP that night. A little while later we saw a few people around our age who were sitting down in the sand. We questioned whether we should approach them, and then finally decided that we should. We sat down next to them and began a lively conversation with the two girls, one of whom just graduated high school and the other who would be a junior in high school. They and all their other senior friends had been drinking, which is probably why they found it intruiging that we were from Wisconsin! We talked about the differences between Virginia and our state for a while while about seven of their friends came and went. Eventually one of the girls asked, "So you guys are here for a reason, right? You're part of a church or something, yeah?" We responded that we were with Cru, and when more of their friends joined us they exclaimed, "They're missionaries from Wisconsin!!" We just smiled and said "Yeah...!"  Another girl soon asked if we had a survey or something like that that we did (which is what we use to get into spiritual conversations when sharing), so we said "sure do! Wanna take it?" "Sure!" We then gave them the survey, to which they responded really well. The high school junior in particular, Morgan, along with her boyfriend, JR, both were very intruiged and began to pour out many of the details of their lives. Morgan told us some of the gory details of her past, such as how she had been raped, her best friends' mom had died of cancer and how her mom had had an abortion and lived daily with the guilt, trying to somehow make up for what she had done. After asking them the third question, I asked if we could explain God's plan of salvation and way of knowing for sure that they could go to heaven, to which they agreed. I then went on to use the KGP to explain the gospel to them! As I explained how we can be completely forgiven of our sins because of Jesus' death, Morgan exclaimed, "My mom needs to see this! Can I keep this book?!" (aaah!!!) We went on to explain the rest of the gospel, and at the end both Morgan and JR expressed the desire to receive Christ, so we prayed with them. I don't know if they were truly sincere or where they are at now, but I do know the there is incredible power in the gospel and in God's word, as well as that He specifally wanted us to talk with them. Please pray that these two people will truly follow Christ in their lives ahead of them! Praise God for answered prayers and open hearts!


I did end up meeting both of my goals, to which I owe completely to the Lord. I had several other sweet conversations as well, but I won't go into all of those.One thing we did yesterday, though, was beat down with bats, sledgehammers and botchy balls this huge makeshift giant that we had constructed to represent facing our giants. Well, my turn came around, so I wound up with the botchy ball in hand, excited and ready to take out the head of the giant! I threw it and definitely missed the giant completely and instead smoked the house next door, just barely missing the window. And I was also the only one that missed. How embarrassing! But mostly funny, I must say. (: In total us 100 students initiated 1,600 conversations this past week, had around 400 gospel conversations and around 33 people received Christ! This was so incredible; there are absolutely insane stories I could tell you, such as people randomly driving to North Carolina and ending up leading a woman to Christ there! Our God is incredibly powerful, beautiful, and chooses to allow US to help Him bring His children home! I'm just so amazed by Him.


The theme for this next week is All for One, which is focusing on building our community so we can have a bigger impact. We are also focusing on continuing our ministry in our workplaces. I am praying and hoping for opportunities this week! Please keep praying for that, as well as for the 3 girls who still need jobs. Thank you all! (: