Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to my friends, colleagues and partners in ministry! We serve a God who has come and is coming again!

Look out for updates from Staff Conference very soon!

Currently digesting the yummy dim sum I had with my family for lunch today. :)

Compelling - an overview report from Ann

My friend and colleague Ann Beyerlein, who directed the Compelling conference, sent me this report this morning!  

 "What do these stones mean?"   After God heaped up the water of the Jordan and brought Israel across on dry ground, he asked Joshua to pick up 12 stones from the river bed to make into a monument in the promised land.  Then the water went back to flowing in its usual way.  The stones were to serve as a reminder of the miracle God did so that "all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God."  Joshua 4  We looked at this text yesterday at our Compelling conference.

 Today is a sweet day of remembering the things that God did this last weekend.  Thank you for praying.  All of our conferences are special in their own way but we entered this one with a sense of anticipation, and today I'm seeing the realization of a number of goals we have been working toward with this conference and with our ministry in Michigan for the last four or five years.  

 God protected our students and conference in many ways and we had a lot of prayer before and during this conference.  Our main speaker connected well with our students.  We had an offering for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students that was well over $6,000.  We had a couple of hiccups but in general the large numbers weren't a problem.  Our break out tracks seemed to run smoothly with students commenting on how much they had learned from the book of Philippians, about Jesus, about sharing their faith, about intercession, etc.   The highlight for us was to seeing about 40 students go forward on Saturday night either making a first time or recommitment to follow Jesus.  Many of these students were freshmen who have been in our Bible discussions this fall and who we will be able to follow up.  God answered our prayers for 10 students to move from darkness to light as they came into the Kingdom.

• Please join us in thanking God and remembering what he did before and during this weekend.
• All our students made some kind of application at the end of this weekend.  Please pray for these tender commitments to begin following Jesus, to begin having a quiet time, to share their faith, to enter into a lifestyle of more purity, etc.  Ask God to protect them from the evil one so that they "might always fear the Lord their God."

Reminder: Prayer for Compelling!

Compelling 2010 is beginning as I type this post! Nearly 500 students and 100 staff & volunteers are arriving in East Lansing for a weekend of worship, Bible study, training and connecting. Please pray with me for God to be present and moving among the students and staff!

Growth

Three and a half years ago i served on the planning team for a new fall conference that would be for all InterVarsity students in the state of Michigan. It began as a conference to train students in bearing witness on their campuses, and we decided to name it Compelling. Compelling 2007 had about 275 students attend, which at the time was one of the largest gatherings of students in Michigan (other than Chapter Focus Week at Cedar Campus).

Though I'm no longer on staff in Michigan i've stayed connected to this conference by working on the visual components - the flyer, website, and other graphics. This year there are nearly 600 students attending Compelling 2010! (i also hear that they unfortunately had to close registration early because there were no more beds available!) I am blown away at how much this conference, and InterVarsity chapters in Michigan, have grown over only 3 years. It is evident that God is working through this conference and as a result more and more students are inviting their peers to join.  It is so exciting to see this happen, from the beginning, when it was just 5 staff with a vision, to now with such a large number of students attending. I am grateful and honored to have a part in God's work.

Compelling 2010 is happening Nov. 12-14 in East Lansing, Michigan. Please pray with me for God to continue to meet students at this conference and that it will result in changed lives. Pray that Compelling 2010 will serve as a catapult in growing our movement in Michigan, that more and more students would become wholehearted followers of Jesus and make a lasting impact on their campuses and in the world.

Camps Calendars: Collect all four!

I am SO excited. After six weeks, the four calendars I've been designing have been finalized and sent to the printer! The project began with a bit of reluctance as I knew it would be a lot of work. And it was. But it also ended up being very enjoyable at the same time.

It was fun to be working with images of such beautiful places, and to think of the thousands of homes where these calendars might be hanging in the coming year. These are the homes of people who have experienced significant God moments at these camps and of those who support the ministry that continues to happen there. I'm glad to be able to minister to these people through these calendars.

Here are the front and back covers. Click on these thumbnails to view them larger.  (InterVarsity staff - these are going to be available to order as donor gifts on the staff store in a few weeks!)

It's in the bag

I received a wonderful surprise a few weeks ago. After having helped design a plastic bag for Carol, whose team was going to use them for New Student Outreach in the Bay Area (California), she sent me a sample with thank you notes written all over the back! I wanted to show it you to also thank you! Your support and prayers enable me to produce things like this bag, which was used this fall to welcome hundreds of students, introducing them to the love of Christ in community!

 this plastic bag was used on campuses in the Bay Area (California) to give out care packages and other information to students new to InterVarsity.

it was such a pleasant surprise to get one of the bags in the mail with notes written all over the back!

here's a closer shot of one of the messages!

Continue the Journey

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted anything! It has been a busy month! Hopefully this video will make up for my lack of posts. This piece was created to recruit students to come on staff and plant new chapters on campuses where there is no InterVarsity presence. Please pray for God to continue to call students to join us in our mission to reach more campuses with the gospel, and that this video will be an effective tool in calling these students.

As a bonus, I have a fairly large role in this video, including a scene where I jump off of a kayak into a lake! (I first appear at 1:28). Look out for my SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas too. :)