It's the Beginning of the End...

...and I don't want to leave

Onward Christian Soldiers

Though it is currently 1 am, pretend it is still Thursday ;)

To call the past couple of days "random," would only be an understatement.

Tuesday morning began as usual with our team meeting. My group decided to go to Laguardia Community College and set up a ministry table to hand out free Campus Crusade promotional materials. Our team of five students (the staff didn't join us that day) grabbed two boxes full of books and Bibles, a couple of bags of water bottles and laundry bags, and a folding table. Needless to say, we were loaded down!! Along the way to the college, we experienced reversing subway trains, taxi drivers refusing to pick us up, walking 10 blocks and then crossing a mile long bridge with all of our supplies! None of these things had to be done the first time we went to Laguardia! Looks like Satan didn't want us there that day!

When we finally got there, we set up and people began to flock to our table. We handed out almost everything and Theresa and Joel led a student to Christ, just by God using our table! People were very interested and we got about 50 contacts, including a pastor! Most said they would be willing to help start a ministry on the campus. I also had the experience of possibly leading someone to Christ for the first time! I met a Chinese guy who first said he was a Buddhist and had never heard of the Gospel. I went through the KGP with him and he said he agreed with everything! I asked him if he wanted to pray for Christ to enter his life and he said he would pray it on his own. I so hope he does! I'm trusting that God will let what we talked about make sense and that he would be compelled to pray the prayer. At the very least, I'm so thankful I was able to share the Gospel with him and that he heard it for the first time.

Yesterday was our last day of ministry on campus. We went to St Francis to set up a table. Within an hour, we had handed out all of our supplies and collected close to 40 surveys. God is so good! I'm in such awe of what God has done even for our team!

Once we returned from ministry, the campus track all headed over to a Karaoke place for a couple of hours. It was AMAZING and so much fun. To finish it, we all sang New York, New York in a big circle. That moment was particularly wonderful to experience. We have had such incredible unity and love as a team. I've never seen anything like it before. It is going to be so hard to leave these people.

Following this, we went to go wait in the Wicked lottery for our friend Alex who has tried 1 3 times to win tickets. Unfortunately, none of us won so he couldn't go. About 11 of us went to dinner at Don't Tell Mama and then decided to walk to Magnolia Bakery. On our way, we passed by the Church of Scientology which said it had free informational films every 15 minutes. We were curious as to what it could be about so we stopped in. My jaw dropped during the film when I realized that people actually follow what was talked about in the video. For instance, at the end, after much creepy eye contact, the narrator told us that if we walked out the door without buying the books, it would be like blowing our brains out or jumping off a bridge and that would be stupid. Wait a second....I thought this was supposed to be an encouraging "religion." Anyway, what I really learned is that this was created by a science fiction writer for rich people. No mention of Jesus or God's redeeming grace. Not even a thought on the afterlife, just people wanting you to buy books in order to be "happy."

Today we went through and organized all of the contact information that we had gotten from the beggining. It was a lot of paperwork (which I actually love to do haha). We then had Indian food for our cultural dinner (yum!)

Now I shall sleep in....

Until we meet again my friends <3

Shaking Hands With Albert

Hola mis amigos!

Yesterday, my team split to help the other two campus teams with outreaches that they were having on their campuses. I went with the City College group to Harlem. Their outreach focused on love and relationships and also incorporated surveys to help lead into spiritual conversations. We were going to set up a table on campus to give away free water bottles, Bibles, Christian books, and highlighters with information about the ministry but the school changed its mind about letting us set up the table. Therefore, we moved to the public sidewalk to set up and had a lot of success gathering contacts.

I went with my friend Jordan to do Soularium around campus while some of the others where at the table. He and I first spoke with a Mulsim guy who told us a lot about his religion. I always enjoy meeting people of other faiths who can inform me about what they believe. The cool thing is, like the guy that we met, a lot of people are curious about Christianity and have a lot of questions about it.

The second person I talked to was dressed in all white, traditional African attire and told us she was an African priestess. She was really excited to talk because she said she was an extremely spiritual person. She grew up in a Christian home with pastors as parents but decided Christianity was not for her. She told us that she practiced a West African religion that was a mixture of various religions. We talked for over an hour and it was really neat to learn her perspective. At the same time, it was sad because we could see that she was missing the most important piece of the puzzle (Jesus).

Last night for our Monday night meeting, the entire project went out on the streets to hand out food to homeless people. Once we got to our designated locations, we were further split into pairs and were given lunch bags to hand out. My partner and I prayer walked for a long time searching for homelss people to give to, but we were not able to find any. This was strange because on a normal day, we see many homeless people. We finally found a man after about 45 minutes of walking who was searching through a trashcan. My partner asked him if he was hungry and we gave him a bag. Almost immediately, he started eating and smiled at us, almost crying. We shook hands with him and he told us his name was Albert. He was very grateful for the food. We asked if he wanted any help finding anywhere for shelter but he said no. On our way back to the meeting place, we ran into two more people who gladly accepted food but didn't want any more help.

It is cool to think about the fact that about 100 people went out with at least one bag per person. If all were handed away, that is 100 homeless people who received dinner in NYC that night.

Quite an exhausting day! But full of God! And the day was completed with some Yogurtland of course ;)

West Side Story

My friends! It has been so long!

Life got fast and crazy as it seems to do up here in the NYC! For the upcoming week, I will try to be better about updating!

This past week my team spent Monday through Thursday at Brooklyn College. Thursday was our last day ever there! We had a rocky start to the week with some mentally and emotionally challenging conversations. Tuesday was especially difficult for my partner and me as we spoke with a Muslim who was completely satisfied with her faith and a girl who was convinced that she was never going to be able to have faith. She said she was an Atheist who was waiting for someone to convince her otherwise. Unfortunately, she had to run to class before we could finish our conversation with her.
Later that afternoon, I was really tired and had some free time to have a quiet time. I ran by this bakery called Crumbs (best..place..ever) and sat in Bryant Park. This place is wonderful because it is one of the few places to see grass and trees. I thought I was going to get some great time with the LORD in. Then all of sudden, two guys come up and asked me, “what if we told you that God was a woman?” From there, we had about an hour long conversation in which we argued about Jesus and the Bible. It was really sad to me about how they twisted the Word. They took a lot of things out of context and were really surprised that I knew as much as I did about Jesus and the Bible (let me tell you, it was all the Holy Spirit talking to them). They asked me to come to one of their Bible studies and I’m thinking about doing it with a couple of my friends. So much for a quiet time! But it was so invigorating to be able to adamantly share my faith.

It was also fun (but not as much as it could be) running back from the park in a thunderstorm without an umbrella.

Some fun things this past week included the best baseball game ever at Coney Island on Friday evening, 4th of July fireworks on the Hudson, and West Side Story on Broadway. At the fireworks, we had to wait for four hours with the most people I've ever seen! If we left, we were not allowed to get back in haha But it was sooo worth it!

This week has been an intense week of learning in both my personal relationships and my relationship with God. I’m learning a lot about forgiveness, patience, and love on both His part and mine. Please continue to pray that I will remain in the Word and put into practice what I’ve learned.

We only have three more days left on campus! Some specific things you can pray for:

- That the team would finish strong (with energy and enthusiasm)

- That God would move on each campus we visit

- That God would continue to work on Brooklyn College in our absence

- Our health-- I'm currently sick and I know a few others are as well- pray that it won't get in the way

Also, tons of new pictures on facebook! Check them out if you get the chance!
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