Looking back...

So it has now been almost 4 months since I departed from Ocean City and it is only now that I am beginning to realize all that happened this summer. God taught me so many things and this 11 week project has changed the course of my life. I praise God for all that He let me experience in Ocean City and I praise God for using each and every one of you to make it possible. Thank you. I thought that I would use this last post to comment on some of the things that I am just now realizing that God was teaching me on the east coast...

I would say one of the biggest aspects of Christianity that I have been learning about is fellowship and my role in the body of Christ. I went into this summer with the mindset of "How can I be filled? What can I get out of the body? and how will this help to serve MY walk with the Lord?" and I continued this mindset all throughout Ocean City and I was filled. The fellowship was amazing. The community served and loved me so well. Everyone on project desired to pour into me and to help me grow and I did. It was the greatest community of believers that I have ever been surrounded by...so leaving this community proved to be REALLY hard for me. I came back to school looking for this community. I came back asking the same questions, "Where can I be filled? How can I be filled? How can I be served?" Every inch of me longed for this fellowship that I experienced in Ocean City, but I couldn't find it. There was nothing that could even come close to resembling what God has given to me this summer. So I became frustrated and angry with the fellowship because I wasn't being filled. I wasn't being served the same way and so I became removed from the body here at U of I, which made it even harder for me. What a blessing the first few months of school were for me. It was hard, but God taught me so much. He showed me that all I was thinking about was ME. Looking for how I could be filled, what I could get out of the body. I was being selfish and sinful. Jesus Christ came to serve, not be served. He served the body to the point of death on the cross. This was REVOLUTIONARY in my understanding of who I am called to be a follower of Christ and as a member of the body of Christ. I am not here to be filled, but with my life fill, serve and share the love of Christ with those around me. The past few weeks have been a pursuit of this revolutionary lifestyle, and it is amazing how God works. It has manifested itself in the way I lead my bible study, how I interact with my friends and how I look to serve the body. By taking the focus off of myself and placing it on Christ and how I can fill up those around me, I have been filled. Filled even more than I was in Ocean City. Its been wonderful to learn this and crazy to see how God was teaching me this in Ocean City even before I realized He was. 

The second big thing that I am coming to realize is the importance of an evangelistic lifestyle. I went into the summer not really knowing how to share my faith. I had this idea that evangelism was an activity that someone does for 2 hours once a week. This is not what followers of Christ are called to. We are called to share Christ with the world and that requires a lifestyle of evangelism, not a 2 hour time block. Every aspect of our lives should point others towards Christ, not just an activity that we do. This has changed the way I go to class, the way I interact with the people that live in my dorm and the way that I look at every single conversation that God blesses me with. It is amazing how the more we are available to God, the more opportunities He gives us to share the gospel and Christ's love with people. I pray that I would continue to grow in this area, that the gospel would be so apparent in my life. I pray that I would constantly look for and act upon the opportunities He gives me.

The last thing that I am going to comment on is a HUGE topic...my life. Going into the summer I really had no clue what the future held for me. Now I still have no clue what God has in store for me, but I do know that I want it to be a life that above all else serves to glorify Him. I gave my summer to Him and He showed me that He is not worth just a summer but my life. I want to glorify Him as a student, as a bible study leader, as a friend, a member of the body, as a son, eventually as a husband and father and whatever other roles He will give me. I do not know where He will have me after college, but I am lifting my future up to Him. I praise the Lord for this summer, I will never be the same. 

Take Up My Cross

Last week we had our second Men's Conference and it was just as moving as the first. The theme verse for the night was Luke 9:23-25. This verse talks about deny ourselves and taking up our crosses for the Lord. The night culminated in an activity where we literally got to carry a cross. We prayed in small groups around a field and talked about what it is we would like to sacrifice for the Lord. The Lord really put my relationships on my heart. Ever since I became a Christian in October I have really been running away from my past lifestyle and everything that went along with it. For the most part this is a good thing. I've been pursuing the Lord and He has been changing me and sanctifying me, but I also have been running away from the relationships I had before October. I associated those relationships with my non-Christian lifestyle and stopped pursuing them. Once I met a group of amazing believers I became so comfortable in my little Christian bubble that I rarely was searching for relationships outside it. The Lord has really been convicting me of this and so I decided that this year I want to reach outside my Christian circle. I want to be able to show Christ's love to those around me in my dorm, in my classes and to those who I have been running from. I want to share my life and what the Lord has done in my life with everyone around me. It is going to be hard to relate deeply with them, but I know the Lord will place me where it is He wants me.

N.Y.C.

So  impact group took a wonderful trip to N.Y.C. last friday and it really got me thinking about the world we live in. I think that this picture of Time Square really is a good representation of how we live our lives. There is so much movement, so many lights, so much going on. We are bombarded by deadlines, urgency and distractions all day long. I look at these people and one question comes to mind...If the Lord were standing before them, would they even stop to notice? Their lives are so jam packed with the things of their lives and the distractions of the world that they are blinded to what it is truly matters. I dunno, it just breaks my heart that these people run through their days thinking they have to make the most money, gain the most power, and make it to the top. Its a lie. A lie that the forces of evil of this world want us to believe. They want us to the believe that if our lives aren't filled with these things then we have failed. We are not successful. LIES! I pray that we would all realize that the things of this world at fleeting. They are fading away. The only things that matter are eternal. We must look at our lives from an eternal perspective and live accordingly. I pray that we will not buy into the lies that the world is screaming at us.

Why I'm Here

This past week was pretty hard for me, but it is so amazing to see how the Lord works through struggles. Saturday night was probably the peak of my frustration and the source of this frustration is what we like to call "project burnout." It has kind of been building momentum throughout the project and I think it really hit people on Saturday night, which happens to be outreach night. Saturday nights have kind of been like game day for me the past couple of weeks. The night you've been training, practicing and stretching yourself all week for. I get very excited to go out sharing with the project and just see how the Lord works through our project. Leading the outreach team, I feel really blessed when I get to walk down the boardwalk and see all the people taking steps of faith. This week's outreach was geared towards sharing what it is God has done in your life through your testimony. Throughout the week we challenged people to rewrite their testimonies as a means of sharing the gospel. The thought behind this outreach was that every single person that has accepted Jesus Christ as their savior is a living testimony. Your testimony is something that no one can take away from you and it is a tool that you will always have with you. So Saturday we focused on sharing what it is Christ has done in our lives. I was really excited going into the outreach, but became very discouraged afterwards. At about 8:45 (outreach goes until 9:30) there really was no one left on the boardwalk. The majority of the project had decided to head back early. This was the first discouragement and was soon followed as we came back to the inn to hear the countless excuses as to why people didn't participate in the outreach. I was very sad and frustrated at what had happened. I was sad because I felt as if I had failed the project. As outreach director I felt that if people weren't sharing their faith it was my fault. The next couple days I really dwelt on this thought of failure, but the Lord revealed to me otherwise. He showed me that instead of celebrating and rejoicing in the steps of faith that were taken, I was dwelling on the bad. I was missing the point. The point of an outreach is for the gospel to be shared with lost. Period. Even if "the lost" is one single person. For one single person to hear the gospel is worth our time and our effort. I was focusing on the results and not the steps of faith that were taken. The Lord is so awesome and has taught me so much. It seems that when I am struggling the most, He is working on the hardest. I learned so much about ministry this week and about praising God for the good and for rejoicing in what DOES happen, rather than what could have been. I Praise the Lord for all that He has taught me here on project, it has been such a stretching summer.

Wow!

Haha in the words of my roommate "God...You are really something else." This weekend's outreach was very moving for me. We decided that for Saturday's outreach we wanted to stretch ourselves and take steps of faith for the people on our hearts back home. A lot of us have become very comfortable with going out to the boardwalk and sharing with strangers, but sometimes the hardest people to share with are the people we love the most. We decided to face this fear and call these people for an outreach. The goal was to set up phone dates with people back home for saturday night, with the intention of sharing the gospel with them. This outreach for me was very close to my heart because the person I wanted to share with the most, came to Ocean City this weekend. My Mom has been on my heart for so long and I had never taken that step of faith to reach out to her. We set up the gym into 4 areas. We had prayer in the sanctuary, silence and solitude in the choir room, fellowship off of the gym and the "calling space" in the gym. It was amazing to walk in the gym and see dozens of people reaching out to the ones they love back home. My Mom and I sat in the sanctuary together for awhile and then I decided to take her up to the gym balcony so that I could talk with her. I started off our conversation by telling her my testimony, ALL of my testimony. She knew bits and pieces, but she has never heard the whole story. I felt that she could not fully know how the Lord has changed my life unless she heard all of it. After telling her my testimony, I opened up to her about my heart behind this outreach. For me, this outreach was for her. I told her that it scared me soo much not knowing what she believed in and how much she means to me. I followed this with a line of questioning. I wanted to know exactly where she was coming from and what she did believe in. After getting a better understanding of her beliefs I was able to share with her the message that has changed my life. I got to thoroughly go through the gospel with her and she followed it so well. She was asking wonderful questions and she had that moment. That moment where in a person's eyes you can see they understand. That moment when a person realizes that its all about Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross. My mom acknowledged that she had never let Christ into her life and that she had never opened that door to her heart, but she wanted to. She wanted Him to come into her life and that's when the Lord made her His. The Lord rose my Mom from death to life on Saturday night and she became a child of God. She prayed to receive Christ and I couldn't help but to rejoice and cry. We sat in the balcony and cried for joy together. Praise the Lord! I don't really know how to describe the amount of joy the Lord has blessed me with from last weekend. All I can do is smile and say "Wow....

Mom I know you are reading this. I am so blessed by having been able to witness the Lord change your Life. You are a child of God and He will never let you go. You have been raised up from darkness into light and out of death into eternal life. You have entered into a relationship of overwhelming love, grace and forgiveness and I am so happy for you. I love you Mom and cannot wait to see how the Lord is going to work in you and through you as we live life together.

Relying on the Lord

The staff is now OFFICIALLY gone, they all have moved out and the project is now entirely run by students. The leadership team gave us the option of not doing an outreach this weekend because of the short notice BUT we decided that we wanted to start this new stage of the summer off right with a challenging outreach. We decided that one of the biggest thing we want people to take away from this summer is to be bold and stepping out in their faith and so last night we took away what has become comfortable to us. We met down in the Ambassador's Inn like in normal pre-outreach style, but instead of passing out surveys and Knowing God Personally booklets, we took them away. We had people empty their pockets and purses and the mood of the room changed pretty quickly. People were pretty nervous about the situation before them because they were really going to be on their own. However, this was the point of the outreach. We wanted people to realize that even when we don't have these great tools in our pockets we are NOT alone. The Lord has equipped us with the Holy Spirit, which is greater than any tool we could create. The Lord has fully equipped us to carry this message because he has written it on our hearts. We wanted people to be relying completely on the Lord for ways of initiating, relating to people and the words to speak. The tools we've been given are wonderful ways of sharing our faith, but we do not want them to become a crutch. There will be countless opportunities that the Lord will present us with, where we will not have these tools to use and so we will have to confident in the Lord's power to work through us. Overall the mood of the project was nervous as we left the Inn, but coming back was a completely different story. Everyone was sharing with each other and excited about the way the Lord had used them. It was great to debrief with the project and just hear how much people had been stretched and how much the Lord taught them. It was a great way to kick off our first weekend on our own as students and it was SUPER encouraging to me on the outreach team to hear how much people had grown through the night. Im excited that the Lord worked in such a big way and I cannot wait to see the Lord ignite a passion for evangelism throughout the project as the summer continues. 

Side note- I got to share my testimony with the entire project before the outreach and it was such a stretching experience. I had never shared before such a large group before and it was amazing to see how the Lord touched so many people's hearts through what He has done in mine. I would challenge all of you to prayerfully remember how the Lord has changed your lives. Every single story that starts in sin and ends in glorification is one worth hearing and one worth sharing.

Stepping Into Leadership

I suppose the climax of this week entitled "Agape" would be the moment last night when the Project Director, Bob Fuhs, said "We are no longer the staff of this project" and proceeded to leave the church with the rest of the staff. The staff got a standing ovation, but the real celebration and excitement began once the doors were closed. The Lord has placed the movement into the hands of the students and we couldn't be more excited. For those of you that have never been on a summer project, the staff leaves half way through the summer and the students fill the roles that the staff once had. Each student is responsible for some task that the staff had and the project really could not function with out each and every student. The staff has asked me to be the Outreach Director, with a girl named Hannah, for the rest of the summer. I am EXTREMELY excited about this position because the Lord has really placed evangelism on my heart this summer and I cannot think of any other job that I would rather do. As the Co-Director of Outreach and part of the Outreach team we are responsible for planning and running all outreaches and evangelistic events. We've already had a few meetings and have been able to plan tomorrow's outreach. I love the team that I get to be a part of, all of the members' passion for the Gospel and their hearts for the lost are so encouraging. We have come up with a vision statement of "Trusting the Lord to ignite a passion for the Gospel here, to create a lifestyle of evangelism everywhere." Our vision for this project is that sharing your faith would not be an activity that you do, but a lifestyle that you live. We want people to fall in love with the gospel and to have a passion for sharing that with other people. It is crazy for me to think about how much growth the Lord has shown me over the past year. Last summer if you would have asked me if I would want to spend 11 weeks next summer sharing the gospel I would have said two things. One: What's the gospel? and Two: You're out of your mind! There was no way that I would have given 11 weeks of my summer to go share the gospel, but now I cannot think of anything greater that I could dedicate my life to, let alone my summer. I praise the Lord for this opportunity to serve Him as part of the Outreach Team and I cannot wait to see how the Lord is going to work, through the gospel, in the hearts of the people on project and in the lives of the people we reach out to. 

God Bless America

God Bless America. Its a song that we've all heard, but since last night I've really been thinking about it. We have been SOO blessed. In America we have 3 meals a day, we've got houses, we've got cars, we've got clothes and shoes, we get paid 7+ an hour, we get etc... but what I've really been thinking about is how God has blessed all of us as Americans to be born in a country where we can worship Him freely. I was thinking last night as I watched the 4th of July fireworks about how all these people were celebrating our independence from England, but I couldn't stop thinking about the freedom that gives us towards our relationship with God. We can openly go to church as much as we want, we can have worship concerts, we can have Bibles and read them whenever and where ever we want! It hit home even harder tonight as we had another outreach. Here we are 110 students all out in a highly populated area, serving the Lord and openly sharing the Gospel with people. This is not the case a lot of places in the world. Our brothers and sisters meet in secret and in hushed voices and in code share with eachother. Always fearing a raid and the persecution that follows that. I praise the Lord for these blessings that we receive through the freedom our country has. With the blessings America has with money and resources. This again points me towards missions. We've been blessed beyond imagine, let's in return take these blessings and take them to the world.

Every Tribe, Tongue and Nation

This week has been really motivating for me. This week's theme is "World Vision" and it has been a week dedicated to learning about what the Lord is doing throughout the world. One of the aspects of the week that has really spoken to me is simply the statistics. According to Billy Graham, 33% of the world considers themselves Christian, which leaves 67% of the world devoting themselves to false Gods or no God at all. With 5.6 BILLION people in the world, 67% is  a lot! Of that 5.6 billion only 7% is experiencing a relationship with Christ and of that 5.6 billion only .10% is experiencing a spirit filled life and is trained in evangelism and discipleship. .10%! How much greater is the call to be involved in the great commission knowing just how great a need there is! The phrase PRAY, GIVE, GO and MOBILIZE has been thrown around this week and I think it is something that all followers of Christ need to be involved in. PRAY would be continually humble yourself before the Lord in prayer for the world and missionaries. GIVE would be to give financially towards missions and to make all that goes into missions possible. GO would be to physically go overseas and to be a part of sharing the gospel with nationals. And MOBILIZE would be like the Cru. staff that is training and teaching the next generation of missionaries. We may not know exactly what God is calling us to be a part of BUT what i've learned is that we ALL are called. Each one of these aspects is equally important and it is a calling worth giving your life to. The Lord has definitely given me a deeper love for world missions this week and I am excited to see where the Lord will be using me in relation to that. 

The picture up top was taken at our Thursday night "World Vision" meeting. We were asked to wear any sort of international "flare" that we might have, and so our action group decided to represent some old testament internationals by sporting the togas. The swords were our welcoming gifts given by our action group leader, Ian. Besides dressing internationally, we've also been doing some other cultural customs such as leaving our shoes outside and eating without utensils, its been kinda fun, but at the same time its made me realize just how different people are. One thing that i've really been thinking about this week is just how hard it really must be to go communicate with people who have grown up in places that might as well be different worlds than America. However, through this thinking the Lord reminded me how powerful the message of the Gospel is. The Gospel is something that EVERY single person on this earth needs to hear no matter who you are or where you live, so with that in mind, as the christian rapper Lecrae would say, "SEND ME! I'LL GO!"

All For One

I'm sure you've all heard the classic saying "All for One and One for All!".... "All for One" was the theme of last week and I would like to start by apologizing for the delay on the update. As a means of promoting more fellowship and building more community the staff shut off the student's internet access all week, which made it problematic to get an update out. So  sorry for the delay, here goes! So to be completely honest I struggled a lot this week on project. Along with taking our internet, the staff basically took away all direct communication with us. The way that they would inform us about events and details they would give a "clue" to one student and it was our job to pass this information by word of mouth to the rest of the project. Some of the things we had to do as a community this week were take an entire project picture without talking, only one person of each gender could set an alarm one morning so we had to wake each other up at different times, and a lot of things relating to the end of the week staff vs. students softball game. I was pretty frustrated with the secrecy this week because in my mind it felt very much like we were at some sort of summer camp. It didn't feel like we were being treated like adults and it didn't feel like real life. It was hard for me to have the desire to participate whole heartedly and my attitude reflected this. The entire week was building towards the softball game climax. We all wore the same uniforms, all 110 of us paraded to the field and we chanted and cheered the entire way there. It was fun and in all honesty I had a great time, but about half way through the game I became discouraged again. In my mind I could not justify playing a softball game instead of doing an outreach (which we had done every other saturday). Again I became frustrated and my attitude toward the night changed drastically. In my journal I wrote "is this really all the body of Christ is for? to have fun with each other?" It wasn't until Sunday that I realized what had really happened throughout the week. Some guys asked me if I'd like to come along on a walk with them and so I went. I ended up talking to them about my frustrations and a guy named Matt really spoke truth into me. He explained that the main reason he came to Ocean City was for the fellowship. He came here to be built up by the body and to be a part of a community of believers. All for One week was exactly what he was looking for. I was so convicted! How selfish I had been all week. In my mind all I could think about was what I would rather be doing, and what I thought was best. Thats not how the body works. I was living this week all for one and that one was me. What I learned this week is that I am a part of the body of Christ and the question shouldn't be what can I get out of this, but instead what can I give to this. How can I be one for all? How can I serve my brothers and sisters? How can I encourage others and spur them on towards Christ? My mindset was so off this entire week. 

It is interesting though, I looked at this week as the worst one since I've been on project BUT I had the best night of project during this week. We had a Men's "conference" on Wednesday, and it was phenomenal. I use the quotations because it was more like Men's boot camp. The staff had us meet them out in the Ocean City state park and immediately we were forced to work together as a group. The entire night was based around community as men, and learning what it means to be a man of Christ. I think that I got so much out of this time was because every single one of us working together and encouraging each other to persevere through the challenges. Not only physically, but spiritually we were stretched as well. I have never been to a men's time that wasn't focused on sexual purity, but this one was different. That issue was addressed, but the night was dedicated to our hearts. It was about how as men we can be being real with eachother. It was about how we can grow together and how we can be waging war on sin as a body. I don't know, when I think about community, this is what I want. I want to be a part of a community that loves on each other and genuinely cares about how the person next to them is doing. I got so much more out of this week than I had expected. I praise God for pursuing me even when I am not whole heartedly pursuing what He lays before me. I also praise Him for teaching me even when I didn't want to learn. 

Awe

The question "What's one word to describe your walk with the Lord right now?" was thrown around this week and it came to me that the only word to describe how I feel is awe. I am in awe of the Lord. The Lord has revealed a new side of himself to me and I cannot describe how amazing this week has been. Before I came to OC I had never seen anyone come to Christ. I have my own story of redemption and have heard amazing stories of how the Lord revealed himself to others, but I had never witnessed someone make a decision for Christ. In Ocean City the Lord has opened my eyes to his passion for the lost and to just how powerful the gospel really is. Watching someone being transformed from the beginning of a conversation to the end of the gospel is such an amazing experience and causes me to praise the Lord on a whole new level. I feel so blessed to have been able to witness the Lord moving in people's hearts and am simply in awe of him.

This week the Lord showed us a glimpse of how powerful he is and how much he can accomplish through his servants. Our goal this week was to have 5079 evangelistic conversations and the Lord was faithful beyond imagine. As a project we initiated 11,526 conversations, engaged in 5094 evangelistic conversations and the Lord has blessed all of us with 204 new brothers and sisters in Christ. 203! and on top of that God has allowed me to witness 24 people ask Jesus to become their Lord and Savior. I have been so blessed by this gift and it has given me an even deeper love for sharing my faith and for the lost.

Today we had a beach party as a project and really just enjoyed being together as a body of Christ. This was the kickoff to this week's them which is "All for One", which is a week dedicated to coming together as a body. Today was a great way to just relax and reflect on what the Lord did this week and to really just rejuvenate. One cool thing that the Lord has presented to me this week is a friendship with a guy named Evan from Russia. He is here for the summer through a work program and after multiple run ins on the boardwalk, Evan asked me if I would like to get a meal with him. He took me to his FAVORITE place to eat here....McDonalds! He loves to go there because he is intrigued by the awesomeness of free refills. Apparently in Russia they don't have free refills and so he gets the smallest drink size and gets 4-5 refills. It was cool to meet someone from somewhere so different than America, but also to have an evangelistic conversation with him. Despite the language barrier it was a great experience and i'm looking forward for the rest of the summer with him.

Killing the Giants

Hey Everyone!

Thank you all so much for your prayers and for your comments back, they are all so encouraging to me. Well a lot has been going on since my last update so here goes. Most exciting for me would just be the fruit that God has shown me in evangelism. We have been going sharing almost every day and the Lord has been using the Gospel to move in people's hearts in a MAJOR way. I have been able to see God bring 17 people to Christ since I have been here and as a project we have seen 90 new brothers and sisters come into his kingdom. WOW! God is so good and worthy of our praise. There is nothing better than to see God transforming someone right before your eyes. I cannot describe the amount of joy I have because of it.

This week is themed "Killing the Giants". Basically this is a week where we are focusing on evangelism and stretching ourselves outside of our comfort zones. As a project we have set a goal and relying on God that we would have the chance to have 5,079 gospel oriented conversations. This number seems so huge, but we are all REALLY excited because we know God is working in big ways here. Personally, I have decided that I would like to stretch myself this week by approaching bigger groups of people. To be honest...they scare me! It is very comfortable for me to approach 1 or 2 people and so I am trying to step out of my comfort zone. 

So I have attached a picture of the wonderful B&B clothing store that has taken me in for the summer. Yes those are cars on the ceiling if you can see them. I have enjoyed it here a lot. Sometimes it can be a bit repetitive (like the day I put foam covers on hangers for 5 hours...) BUT the ministry opportunity here is so awesome. I have already been able to get into some spiritual conversations with some of the people I work with and a few of them are excited to come hang out with people on project. Sunday night we had an "adoption" dinner at the church we are attending and I got adopted by Ray Adams. Basically the point of the adoption is for us to get to know some people in the congregation and so that we would feel loved and welcomed. Throughout the summer we'll be meeting up with Ray for meals and other things and just getting to know him. He's 78 and loving the Lord. Ill try and get a picture of him next time. 

Again, thank you all so much for everything. I don't know if I can explain how encouraging you all have been to me. I thank God for the impact you have all made on me and the love that you have all shown me. I hope everything is well with all of you and that God is blessing your summers. 

The Power of the Gospel

The past two days have been so amazing. Yesterday was our second outreach and God was powerfully using our project to reach out to the lost. Personally, I was able to pray with two guys that wanted to receive Christ and again it was phenomenal to serve God and to see the gospel change lives. Last night alone 19 people came to know Christ and soooo many more were able to hear the gospel. Praise the Lord for opening the ears of these people and for revealing himself to these 19. It is so amazing to think that one day we will be seeing all of these people again in Heaven. I am so thankful that it is up to God to work in these people's lives and that it is not by anything we do or say. It gives me so much confidence sharing the gospel because I know that God is sovereign and has everything under control. After last night, as a project, this summer we have seen 28 people come to Christ. WOW!....... Tonight God was working again and again I praise God for the opportunity to witness more people come into his kingdom. I went sharing with a guy named Ryan and it was by far the best night I have had since I have been here. The first conversation we got into was with two high school students named Rory and Ryan, and they both received Christ after going through the KGB. Ryan and I were so excited after the conversation and we were praying, dancing and running down the boardwalk. The next conversation we had was with two guys named Doc and Nick and after hearing the gospel and rethinking their works based salvation beliefs they too decided to receive Christ! It was an amazing experience and the words that come to mind to describe the night are ecstatic, jubilation and just pure joy. I encourage all of you to take the time after reading this to just thank the Lord for how  good he is to all of us. For the wonders of his grace and the forgiveness he gives out of love. Praise the Lord that he is working in people's lives and is bringing more and more people into his kingdom every single day.

Employed

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for all of your prayer support through this past week, God has definitely been working here in OC. I am now an employee at a beach wear clothing store called B & B. I started today and praise God for this opportunity because it has already been a blessing. I have already had 2 opportunities to have semi-spiritual conversations with two of my co-workers and am excited to see where those could lead to. Everyone is really nice there and were just very welcoming to me on my first day. I think my favorite part was that I really felt like I was serving the other people working there. A lot of the employees are either smaller women or mid-aged to older women and they have trouble reaching high things, lifting heavy things and running back and forth throughout the store. They were all so appreciative that I could do these things for them and it really made me feel needed there at the store. I am praising God for just providing a great environment for ministry, serving and it is going to be nice to be able to bring in a little money this summer as well. 

News from the Project: This week was pretty exciting at our large group meetings because we had the priviledge of having Christian author Randy Newman come and speak to us about evangelism. It was great to hear his perspective on evangelism and he taught us some really sweet techniques on how to go about talking to people. His biggest emphasis was on teaching through asking questions and allowing people to come to answers through those questions. One pretty neat story from sharing this week happened yesterday with a guy on the boardwalk. He was paralyzed from being hit by a drunk driver and he was Jewish and believed in reincarnation. His life story alone was enough to make it a great conversation, but I really got excited as we began to go through the gospel with him. He began to ask so many great questions about God, sin and redemption and was just very receptive to what God was teaching him. We didn't get to go through the entire KGB (Knowing God Booklet) because his friends told him they had to leave before we were done, but it was so encouraging because he asked us if he could take the booklet with him to learn more later. Usually we have to tell people they can take them, but he was excited to hear more about what Jesus did on the cross. So pray for him! and praise God for what He is doing in people's lives here in OC. Hope all is well! Email me or comment back on the blog, I'd love to hear from all of you!

Welcome to Ocean City!

Hello!

I just want to start this off by just again saying thank you. Thank you all for your support and encouragement through this whole process. It has already been a great experience for me to just see all of your desire to see God move here on this project. It is encouraging to me to know that all of you are back home praying and supporting me. Well our van of 5 made it here alive after the 14 hour drive from Champaign. We only got lost once so it wasn't too bad. We got here around 8:00PM on Tuesday and immediately I knew this was going to be a phenomenal summer. The fellowship this week has already been great and the staff and other students are all so on fire for Christ. The project's desire to come together united in the gospel has just been great to be a part of. This week was full of orientation sort of activities but it was also PACKED with lots of worship, prayer and just quality time with the Lord. I have already had a great experience with sharing on the boardwalk.

Our first outreach was on Saturday and already the Lord is working here in Ocean City. Our first outreach was just the typical sharing in pairs. We are using surveys and a gospel tool called the "knowing God personally" booklets (a little book that runs through the foundations of Christianity). My discipler and I went out to the boardwalk and got to talk to 3 high schoolers, but had to cut our conversation short because it started to storm and the guys had to leave. I was a little discouraged, but it was great to get out there. Later that night a roommate, Levi, and I went back out to the boardwalk to see if anyone was out there. We ended up talking to two guys for about 45 minutes. They grew up with a Catholic backgrounds and believed that if they lived "good" lives that they would be going to heaven. We kind of got to process through that with them and we got to go through the KGP booklet. After we were done with the booklet we asked them 0-100%, how sure would they be that they were going to heaven if they died today? They both said they were unsure, but that they were probably 90-95%. It sounded like they were unsure if they had ever invited Christ into their lives so we asked them if they would like to be 100% sure they were going to heaven by praying to receive Christ. They both decided that it was something they wanted to do and they prayed to receive Christ and be forgiven for their sins. It was so encouraging and a great experience to see God work in these two guys' lives. Praise God that He is sovereign and working in the lives of all of us on project and the people we are reaching out to.