2 girls trust Christ!

This semester, my staff team and I are launching 13 new movements on multiple campuses around the Houston Metro Area. Tuesday we went out to Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. Our goal was to advertise for the current CCC ministry and look for new students who weren't currently involved to hopefully start a new movement. Part of how we launch new movements is through evangelistic surveys.
We ask 5 questions such as
1. How would you describe your religious background as a child?
2. How would you identify yourself now with respect to religion?
3. What 3 words would you use to describe your religious experience?
4. Have you ever experienced God? and if so how?
5. On a scale of 1-10 rate your desire to know God.

So I did a this survey and one similar to it with 2 different girls and both of them indicated a desire to know more about how they could know God. So I shared a simple outline of the gospel with them and they both said that they wanted to receive Christ. Praise God for Sarah and Bri! It was especially exciting after I shared with Bri because she asked for another copy of our Knowing God Personally booklet (evangelistic tract) so that she could share it with her boyfriend. Now I'm praying that these girls would grow in their new faith and get involved with the new movement at Lamar.

i feel old

fact- I am 27 years old but today my body feels like its about 85- but thats what a 12 hr work day will do to you i guess.

I went to bed tonight at 9:50 pm-- well i'm sitting in bed with my laptop, but nonetheless, still in bed...

We moved our office today, and it is nice to be finished with it, but now at my local home depot, I am the "Dolly Girl" because I had to rent a dolly to help with our move and the older gentleman at the tool rental counter thought that it was the most hilarious thing that I was renting a dolly. I guess he mostly just sees older contracter-type men . . .

First Day of School!

Today was the first day of school for the University of Houston, and several other of our Houston schools. We had our annual "Cougar Kick Off" event at the University of Houston where we gave away 2,000 icee pops, information about our Bible Studies, and raffled off some gift cards and a Nintendo Wii! The staff and students had a great time connecting new students to our ministry. In addition to handing out info for our ministry, I helped lost students find classes, administration buildings, and get connected.

Campus Crusade makes the world small: I met a student who had spent the summer in Alaska where she met and spent time with a Campus Crusade for Christ summer project. She heard all about our campus ministry and was excited to get involved here in Houston. I was handing out the popsicles and she said to me, I don't want a popsicle, but I would like to know how to get involved with this ministry! ** Please pray that the students who came by our table today would get involved with or start a new movement in their area of influence.**

Stilettos and Handbags

This falls into the random silliness category . . .

I just watched a show on TLC called Fashion Fanatic and I have to say that I have grown into one. I never wore high heels and always carried the same purse until I moved to Spain. It's been a few years since living in Europe and I am still loving my heels. The tv show wasn't all just to make me drool over fashion; I did learn how a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes are constructed, over 129 steps, and all hand made! But I will still probably never spend the $2,000 + for a pair of Ferragamos. And handbags... If I could afford the $2,180 metallic python shoulder bag- i would love it! well until I thought about all the starving kids I could feed with that much $$. ok so i'm a little too practical to have designer accessories, but i can still enjoy them, buy knock offs right? all summer in East Asia I pretty much just wore 2 pairs of flip flops and since coming home I've worn my heels as much as possible. I can't explain it exactly, but putting on a pair of fashionable high heels just makes me feel feminine and put together even if the rest of my outfit is just shorts and a tank top. One segment of the show was the host taking a work out class in high heels to help strengthen her core and give her proper posture so that she could walk longer in her heels. I draw the line at working out in my high heels, its Adidas all the way baby! k well I think thats enough on that topic for now ( i can't let people in too much to the shallow side of me :)

East Asia Summer Project Update

The Lord has truly done amazing things in the past 6 weeks through our summer project in East Asia. Since the country that we were in is closed to missionaries, our official reason to be there was language study. We attended and lived at the #3 University of the province hoping to start a new ministry there. More than 30,000 students attend this university and our group of 11 were the only Americans there. This celebrity-like status tremendously helped us in our ministry because students were very interested in being friends with us and that gave us ample opportunity to share our faith.

Each day I would spend the morning in language class and then go to the cafeteria for lunch. Because I was unfamiliar with the food and wanted to make friends that I could eventually share Jesus with, I would approach a girl and ask her to help me get my food. Then I would ask her to if we could eat lunch together. While getting to know each other over lunch I would try to bring up some sort of spiritual topic to see if she might be interested in hearing more about Jesus at a later date. If she seemed interested, I would get her phone number and meet her another day to share more. Once I felt that a student was genuinely interested, I would bring out a copy of the 4 spiritual laws in English and their language. We would read through it and then I gave them the chance to place their faith in Christ. At the end of the summer two of the girls I shared with placed their faith in Christ, and in total for our team, we saw 14 students begin relationships with Jesus!

Let me tell you about Molly. I met her the last week we were on campus and when she found out that I was a Christian, she boldly told me that she wanted to know how to become a Christian. This was very unusual for an East Asian student to express so much spiritual interest the first time to meet; so I arranged to meet her another day at the Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street from campus. As I began to make small talk with Molly and her friend, Molly interrupted and asked “How can I be a Christian?” I was in awe at how God had been working in her heart to bring her to this point. So we went over the gospel and how she could pray to receive Christ. She was so sweet and sincere as she asked me if it was ok to pray in public. I told her that it was ok as long as she did it silently (for security reasons). So she folded her hands, bowed her head and prayed right there in the KFC while her friend and I sat by her side. Praise God for our new sister in Christ!

After finishing 5 weeks in our country we traveled to Busan, South Korea to attend CM2007, a worldwide student missions conference. Though tired from my time in East Asia, this conference was energizing and visionary in thinking about world missions. More than 17,000 students and staff attended from over 129 different countries. One of my most memorable moments of the conference was worshipping with students from Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and South Africa (the African students sure can dance!)

Each day we heard from speakers who compelled us to reach the 6,000 unreached campuses in the hopes of winning the campus today so that we may win the world tomorrow! After spending 5 weeks in a closed country, worshipping out loud and hearing the vision of why I do what I do was wonderful. If you are interested in more of what happened at CM2007, the sessions were video cast on the web and you can see them at http://soon.kccc.org/Main/program/2007_vod/cmvod_eng.html. or at the videos posted on my main page. Thank you for praying and partnering with me in ministry!

rainbows and other opening thoughts

so i used to have aministry website at ministryhome.org and since being in East Asia over the summer, I had to cancel that page- hence the new blog page here :)

Today i had a 4 hour drive home and about 2 and 1/2 hrs into it hit a few thundershowers. But the amazing thing was the rainbows that stretched across the texas landscape. Earlier in my drive I had spent some time in prayer (eyes open of course) and was really wanting to connect with God. Though I talked to Him a lot, I didn't feel like we connected very well- probably cause I didn't listen too much. SO when I saw the first rainbow, i felt like God was telling me that He heard me and wanted to show me some of his glory. Then after a few miles of dry weather I hit a nasty rainstorm but with bright sunlight and I saw the brightest, most glowing rainbow I have ever seen. It arced complety over the highway and was a shining beacon of God's promise. I even tried to take a picture with my camera phone but it was too dangerous for me to get a good shot, so I gave up.

So that is the extent of my first blog . . . we start up the ministry next week so stay tuned for further updates :)