Countdown

2 days and counting until our students come together for our annual conference. Collegiate Navigator ministries from all over California, Arizona, Hawaii and even Utah will be joining together just 40 minutes east of San Diego to learn about and worship our great God. Every year God has spoken to me in a very powerful and tangible way. I can't wait to see the things he will do in these students lives this weekend. Will you pray for them with us for their time at the conference?

1. ALL Obstacles keeping them from attending would be taken away
2. Protection from the enemy that would try to keep them from coming or engaging with Him or one another
3. Unity among the students that would bond their hearts towards one another
4. Humility and teach-ability would reign in their hearts in preparation
5. Each student would be touched in a dramatic way by God's love and truth

Success

I love my job. But...It's so easy in this stage of my life to look around at all my friends and peers and wonder if this is where we are REALLY suppose to be. From the world's stand point, I just feel like we missed the boat somewhere. There seems nothing about our life that even hints at any kind of success. This causes questions to begin running through me head, like "Should I have stayed a music teacher? Should we have started having kids earlier? Should I have gotten my Masters? Should Ryan have gone down a different career path? Should we have stayed in Arizona? or at least moved somewhere less pricey?" But then I come back from nights like this night and I KNOW in my very soul that we are exactly where God has placed us and wants us. I think for me, success in life is being faithful to where God has placed you and being joyfully content for the things He's placed in your life. And if that is success, then I feel like he's pushing me in that direction.

I love being with these college students. I love laughing with them, talking with them, playing games with them and even crying with them. I love telling them about Jesus, praying with them, praying for them, watching them grow, and being there when they fall. I love them so much that I feel I'm beginning to understand a little bit about how Paul felt when he told the Phillipian church that "God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus." My prayer is that this affection grows between us and them but also between the students themselves. Our prayer for the ministry this semester is that their hearts would be knitted together for the work of the Gospel on the campus at SDSU. If God would do that, then I feel we could look back and say we had a pretty successful semester as a ministry. But as for me personally, I want to continually strive for faithfulness and joyful contentment. Only then, do I feel I will be able to stop comparing myself to others and see that the only success that matters is what Christ already did on the cross. Everything after that is just...small potatoes.

Fruit of the Harvest

Freshman Bible Study in the dorms

Freshman Friends

Over the summer Valerie and I began to pray and ask that Jesus would give us a community of freshman men and women who would desire to know Him and who would make Him known in the dorms. These students are the answer to our prayers!  Each of these students are pursuing Jesus and getting grounded in His Word. We normally meet in their dorm for the Bible study, but the night of this picture we had them over to our house for hot chocolate, cheesecake or pie, and really focused on the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was a special night of bonding, discussion, and fun after with a Nintendo Wii! 

Not only are we meeting as a community, but Valerie and I have the privilege of meeting with each of these students one-on-one to help them grow deeper in their walk with Jesus. They are eager to learn and to apply what they learn. We haven’t seen this kind of community at SDSU in a long time, and we are incredibly thankful to God that He is forming this community for His glory and Kingdom! 

We are also thankful for Jesus allowing us to be with these students as they struggle with issues of faith and hardships in life. We see the gospel of Jesus coming into these areas and transforming them to bring glory to Him!

A Big Ask and a Big Thanks

We would like to thank all of you for your support, both financially and prayerfully. We would not be able to have this ministry without your faithful and loving support!

However, we have a budget gap that we would like to ask you all to help us close this year. Because of this gap we both have part-time jobs, and though this helps it takes away from our availability to the students we feel called to minister to. We are currently only part-time with the Navigators and deeply desire to be full-time!

Would you prayerfully consider giving a special year-end gift by 12/31/10 to help us close our budget gap and return us to full-time campus ministry?

We are trusting God that He will provide for all our needs, and we are so thankful that He has given us such wonderful friends and family to support us! THANK YOU!!

As the Lord leads you, please visit www.navigators.org/us/support for on-line giving options or click the link above.

A New Harvest!

Well, a new school year has started and we are on the ground running! What a month it has been so far; exhausting, yet encouraging. Over the summer we had been praying that the Lord would form a community of freshman men and women who love Jesus, want to know Him more intimately, and who desire to share Him with those other students around them.Over the course of this month we have seen the Lord begin to answer those prayers so faithfully! 

It started with one freshman man, who we will call "Tommy", whom the Lord brought through one of our returning students. As we started to get onto campus and recruit students, it became clear that God wanted to use Tommy as a seed from which this little community would grow up. Jesus began to bring us to students who lived in this man's dorm hall, and who wanted to know more about Him. During the first week of school, God gave us open doors into 3 dorms; so we went up with some pizza into those dorms to see whom the Lord would bring us. After that night we all had met just about everyone on all three of those dorm floors where we were at! It was an amazing night of meeting students and planting the seed of the gospel in those dorms. After that, we decided to have our first Bible study in Tommy's dorm. We felt that the Lord was leading us to go through a study called  The Story of God, which follows the redemptive thread of God in Christ through the whole Bible. It was a smashing success! The freshmen loved to talk about all that God had done, and His relationship with human kind. They are learning about the dignity of man because of how God created us in His image, the utter sinfulness and rebellion that we as human  naturally live, and the ridiculous mercy that God shows us all the time! The study has grown from just one man and a couple of women, to a few men and several women, recruited by the students as well as from us. Some know Jesus, and some do not yet know Jesus.

Our desire is to see these freshman men and women come to know Jesus, walk with Him daily, and make Him known in their dorms and lives. God has been so gracious to give us theses students to love and care for, and we are so grateful for the privilege to be sharing the gospel and the Word of God with these students! Even though this last month has been really tiring, we are very encouraged by what Jesus is doing on the campus, and in the lives of these particular students.