Monday, April 4, 2016

As the Semester winds down things pick up!

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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