School is done!
For me at least. And by that I mean I’m done with my
weekly assignments. I still have a massive research paper due at the end of the
month, but I don’t have to read a book a week anymore which frees me up, a lot!
Well looking back, I’m ashamed to save I have no given an
update in quite a while, all semester even! And I apologize for that. I don’t
make excuses, only explain, and the reality is that first off, not a lot went
on this semester until recently. Secondly, I have been busy with my own school
work. I do recognize that I need to be better at time management, and hopefully
for the remainder of the semester and going into the summer and next year I can
do better! But enough of that, on to what’s been going on in Altoona!
As I said, not a lot has taken place over the past few
months until recently. Our attendance has not been the greatest, we’ve been
fighting uphill battles, and we’ve seen less and less commitment from students.
But over the past few weeks a lot has begun to happen!
Students have been coming around more, even just to hang
out and awesome relationships have begun to form! It’s been great getting to
know the students that we have and their friends over the past few months.
During this semester we’ve had three new students come check us out, and
retained them. This is helping us figure out what sets us apart from other
campus ministries, and I think the biggest difference is that we go deeper into
biblical truths than other campus ministries. I can’t be sure of that because I
have not attended other ministries, but from conversations with students and
the aftermath of a lesson it definitely seems that is our niche. Most weeks
after we get done they look at me with blank stares and simply say, “I need a
week to digest all of that.” Yes, it’s nerdy of me to say, but I love those
moments. Finding deeper biblical truths to share with others and having them
need to chew on it for a week.
The past few weeks saw work really pick up, where we had
a lot to plan and do. Last Tuesday CSF along with two other campus ministries
hosted an open forum on campus. Our intention was to just answer questions that
students had about Christianity, the Bible, and other faith related topics in
order to promote healthy conversation on campus about these things. My two
student leaders and myself organized the majority of the event and had another
student help out with some tabling and promotion which was a real help! It was
awesome watching our students step up and take charge of this and have some
ownership over it! Our attendance for the event was about what we expected but
lower than we planned for, which was fine. Promotion by the university was not
entirely the best, but for what it was (an event planned by three guys in three
weeks) it went incredibly well!
During the month of March also saw Spring Break and a
mission trip back to Tennessee just like last year! We tried to get some of our
students to go, but late planning led to none of them being able to go, so I
tagged along with our Pitt campus ministry and it was a blast. On the way down
we stopped in Grayson to pick up Rachael so she could tag along. While we were
down there we worked with Empower Cocke County, a local ministry which will
function as a resource center in the future. Our time there was great, cleaning
the building, having times of fellowship, and exploring the local area. It was
great getting to spend time with the Pitt group again after leaving them and
seeing what’s been going on in their lives.
This semester our weekly IMPACT meetings have been going
well. As I mentioned above we’ve been getting deep into different biblical
truths and topics. We started off the semester with some more refined topics
such as Christian maturity, why is there suffering, time management, work as
worship, etc. Then we switched gears because one week I just felt like we
needed to get back to the center: Christ. So we spent one week for about an
hour and a half just talking about Jesus, our ideas of him, who he is and what
he’s done. From there we moved to reconciliation, forgiveness, and spent two
weeks on freedom in Christ. We went with a different direction for the first
week and this is where things got incredibly deep. We spent a good amount of
time talking about how we have freedom in Christ from our negative emotions:
Anger, desire for retaliation, lust, coveting, jealousy, etc. This is when I
had my students look at me and go, “I need a week.” The next week we talked
about the other aspect of freedom which can be seen in 1 Corinthians 6.12, “All
things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. This obviously leads
into the discussion on freedom in action, but a need for maturity in that. An
especially important topic for college students.
In personal news, a lot has happened! If you received my
January Newsletter you know that I’ve moved! The church here that CSF is
partnered with and that I’m on staff with offered me free housing in the
church’s office house which is right across the street from campus! So now I
get to save a great deal of money by not having rent or from having to drive to
campus every day, now I can just walk! This frees up a lot of money to help
with a number of things: Getting settled in Pennsylvania with license,
insurance, cellphone bill, starting to save up to pay off student loans, and
saving up for my upcoming wedding! For those of you that don’t know, I got
engaged! March 18th my fiancé and I decided to go ahead and get
married in September as opposed to waiting for May or June of 2017. We’re both
really excited for this and even more excited to finally be near each other
after 2 ½ years of being apart. The race begins for wedding planning, saving
money, and looking for a place to live here in Altoona! Prayers, advice, and
any help would be greatly appreciated!
But I think that’s all that I got from here in Altoona.
I’ll be putting together a Newsletter today which will mostly be what I’ve put
in here, but it’ll still be great! Thank you for all of your prayers and
support. As always feel free to contact me at any time about anything!
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