Staff Conference

A great Thanksgiving it was! Just prior to the Thanksgiving celebration, the staff team headed over to Indianapolis for our yearly staff conference. It included the entire Great Lakes Region, all of OH, IN, IL, and MI. It was so so refreshing. The focus was to celebrate what is happening at all the various campuses, and to recenter our focus on Jesus. Its one of those things that you think will never be an issue again, since ministry is now the full time job. But to refocus on Jesus was so critical, and revitalizing. At this point, there is about a 3 week time till Christmas break, and the challenge now is to keep our students motivated in this time!

Staff Detroit Trip!

Hey everyone, just got back from Detroit! The staff team went up there to work with a church that is right on the boarder from where you will have on 1 side of the street extremely impoverished residents, and the other side near mansions. It was a surreal experience to say the least. Driving to the church it seems like every couple of homes was burned to the ground! We helped out with a harvest festival and basketball tournament over the Halloween weekend, as the "holiday" tends to be littered with racial tension and violence rather than fun. The festival and tournament allowed for an opportunity for the Kids to have a healthy environment, and to experience Christs Love. Being the artist I am, i was on face painting duty...yep, for 4 straight hours. The trip to Detroit also allowed us staff to "explore" so to speak the area, to see if we could potentially lead a group of students there over a spring break to help out further. That is still up in the air, but I really hope to head back.

First Two weeks of Campus!

So I finally made it to campus! It has been a great experience reconnecting with guys who I had invested into last year. The Lord has blessed their lives indeed! It seems that from last year to now all of em have experienced growth in their faith, and luckily not the opposite. I sat down with an old atheist friend of mine who told me ha has come to the point where he is ready to consider Jesus in his life...that was an awesome conversation to say the least. In other news, the Life group that I have co-lead over the past year has grown immensely! The first two weeks, we had over 25 students trying to fit in my little apartment living room...there was literally people standing along the wall to be there. Because of this, we are splitting the group! Another Life Group is born from ours. This brings myself into the main leadership role of the new group. Continue to be praying for the life group as we split. That the existing community can handle the split maturely as well as bring up other leaders in our groups to continue to lead as our senior leaders graduate.

How Exciting! Im at 85% of my goal and counting. My hope is to be assigned to my post in a week. Its crazy how God moves in all of this, I had over 17% happen in less than a week. It has also been a great experience, to see people and groups pray for me in this. I have been overwhelmed with prayers and words of encouragement in this time. My first official day was supposed to be yesterday, but only a week behind in all of this is really good considering all the circumstances.

Keep praying for me as I continue into this last week of finding partners to come along for this journey to seek out men and woman for Christ!

This is becoming a reality.

This weekend our staff team got together for a great time of bonding, and strengthening our team as we head into the fray. Most of the time was meant for us to really build our relationships with each other by learning of, and discussing our strengths. Taking the strength finders test was actually very affective to help discover where my energy is best placed. I have always been skeptical of such tests, but i was pleasantly surprised. My strengths are as follows in order...
Achiever-People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.
Positivity People who are especially talented in the Positivity theme have an enthusiasm that is
contagious. They are upbeat and can get others excited about what they are going to do.
Woo - People who are especially talented in the Woo theme love the challenge of meeting new
people and winning them over. They derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a
connection with another person.
Relator - People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others.
They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
Communication - People who are especially talented in the Communication theme generally find
their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.

I find this to be very accurate.

In other amazing news, the school year has not even begun, and a student has come to CHRIST!!! A previously agnostic student who has been staying with one of our staff members for some time, came to know the Lord last night :D I am so blessed to be able to be apart of what God is doing in BG.

First post as the adventure begins

Greetings! I will be periodically updating my site each month as I plan my first year as a full time Campus Crusade for Christ intern! This is a very exciting time, but I need to continue to be faithfully working toward reaching full support in order to be assigned to my post by late August. Prayers toward this goal would be great to have. Thanks again! I'll keep you all informed on what's to come. :)

-Ben