Coming together

It is only 2 days away from the beginning of the outreach that we've been planning for for over3 months, and have been praying for for over 4 years. It's hard to believe it's this week! I want to give a little update...to tease your palette of things to come ^_^.

Concert of Prayer

Last Tuesday we held a joint concert of prayer for CMU and Pitt in place of our regular Large Groups. We set up 4 prayer stations where students could go and see different areas of the outreach and the campus, as well as themselves, that they could pray for. We spent a wonderful time in worship, and an amazing time in prayer. For an hour and a half over 40 students came together in agreeance and prayed for the "Extreme Hunger - Extreme Hope" Events.

Training

Today we had a training event where about 25 students came to be trained in how to do Proxe Stations and how to do effective follow-up. We spent 4 hours together learning new proxes and simple ways to start conversations and keep them flowing. Many of the students (if not all) signed up to be involved in at least 1 proxe this week...most of which signed up for 2 or more. I am looking forward to see how God will be using our conversations there to reach out to His students at Pitt.

A fun thing we got to do today was practice for the upcoming talent show. We (InterVarsity staff and students) are opening the main event speaker, Paul Hassel, with a sword fight/movement piece. At first as Amy and I worked on it together I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. I was worried it would look corny and weird. Today we were able to practice with some of the students and teach them the begining part of the piece. After seeing it happen with more than Amy and I it looks great. The students really enjoyed working on it, and we are having a great time putting it together. I am excited to see how God uses this piece to speak out against the issue of hunger and what our part it to help end it.

For your enjoyment I am going to post a small portion of the practice that we had. This particular piece is in about the middle of the song when the "Defender" comes to stop "Hunger" from killing all the innocent people. Remeber we were just practicing so it's not perfect...but i still think it's pretty good. ^_^




1st Talk

One last thing I want to briefly mention (honest!). This past Thursday was a momentous occasion for me. I spoke for the first time for a Large Group meeting at WVU. I was very excited that the 1st talk I would do was at my Alma Mater, that I would get to see my friends that are still there, but mostly to bring a message I thought they needed to hear. We studied in Mark 4 (Manuscript style) about the Sower and the Seed and the Lamp on the Stand. I first had them say IV's vision statement (which was funny that the guy who summed up what IV is, was a 1st time ever attender that they had met at a proxe station that week), and did a manuscript study in Mark, and I gave a wrap up segment where I pulled everything we talked about together for a central truth. It was really a great time! I was worried that I would lose my words, stutter, and not be clear, but after Karla, Katie, and Tim prayed for me before I began speaking I felt a wave of peace come over me, and I could sense the Lord guiding my words and it all made sense! It was a great night where we all learned something. This talk was good for me, for it has helped me relax about the Outreach a little bit, and now I am pumped and ready for it.

Stay tuned throughout the week. Who knows what might happen that I will have to share with you ^_^