Things are off...

Summer is practically over and I am back in Winfield at college. I would have to say, it's good to be back at SC. I've been as busy as ever, and thought I better write a blog to catch a few of you up ;). Move in was last Saturday. My wonderful parents drove up to Winfield to help me move in and then they enjoyed a little R & R themselves out at a bed in breakfast owned by a couple of professors here on campus. I think they enjoyed their time in Winfield. I moved in to an apartment type of dorm with Jessica S. my new roommate for the year. She is one of my best friends at college! I am so excited to spend the year with her. We've decorated our room in red, black, and white. We finished as of last night and things look pretty schnazzy. I will have to try to upload some photos later when I have the time.

Classes started last Wednesday. I am currently enrolled in: Old Testament, Introduction to the Church, Discipleship, Critical Issues in Health, and Logic. I was supposed to take Greek, but they couldn't find a teacher for it so it got cancelled at the last minute. However, God has really opened some doors for me in place of Greek. Over the summer, when I was at the Desperation Conference in Colorado Springs, a man named Pete Greig spoke. He is the founder of the 24/7 prayer movement in Britian and around Europe and he also is one of the founders of an organization called CampusAmerica. It just recently started and strives to start prayer movements on college campuses in America. When Greek was cancelled Jessica (my roomie) and I talked with our campus minister and discipleship coordinator about taking an indepedent study on prayer in place of Greek. She was quick to catch our vision and agreed to look over what an independent study on prayer would look like for us. Here are a few of the goals for our independent study:

• We really want to work on starting and eventually start a prayer room on campus, available to students at anytime
• We would like to do a campus-wide 48 hours of prayer event
• We are thinking about participating in a night of Desperation in Winfield (where some leaders from TheFurnace (a prayer house in Colorado Springs) come and lead a night of prayer/worship in our community)
• We are trying to decide books to read for our class...Here are some are thinking about: "Deep Unto Deep" by Dana Candler, "Red Moon Rising" by Pete Greig, "24/7 Prayer Manual" by Pete Greig, "Too Busy Not to Pray" by Bill Hybels, and "Prayer" by Richard Foster
• We want to visit some prayer houses and talk with some prayer leaders! Luckily for us, there is a prayer house in El Dorado! We are also thinking about visiting IHOP (International House of Prayer in Kansas City) or TheFurnace (In Colorado Springs)

All in all, things are going GREAT! I am so excited to see what God has in store for this semester. I am also continuing my work at Epic this semester, working with the children's ministry. Today was another preview service. Things went AWESOME! They're starting to come together. God's a-movin--that's for sure. Although blogs won't be as prominent this semester as they were this summer, I will still try to keep you all posted! Now onto homework...

You Know You Work With a Church Plant If...

So Trista and I were driving today and we were laughing at all of the STUFF I had in the back of my car. We decided we needed to post "You Know You Work With a Church Plant If..." Blog. Enjoy!

Here we go...

You know you work with a church plant if...

• It's not unusual to have nine 5 x 5 rugs, four 5 x7 carpets, two large plastic tubs, eight pool noodles, a broom, latex gloves, four yard signs with missing stands, and shopping lists scattered all around your car all at the same time.
• You go to Dillons and eat all their sample food for lunch (ex. cheese cubes, small roast beef sandwich, and canteloupe)
• You max the credit card out all the time
• You make the people at your printing place despise you because after the third time of re-filling the black ink, they're completely out of stock and you're not done yet
• One of the four-year old's that is a child of one of your launch team members runs around saying, "Hello everyone, I'm stressed out."
• You live in a basement and use rafters as your closet
• You and ONE other person can canvas (put flyers on cars) in an entire Wal-Mart parking lot in twenty minutes
• You're an EXPERT at rolling up a moon bounce
• You run out of milk and realize you have to make your macaroni with water. Then it tastes nasty, but you eat it anyway cause you're hungry
• You and your fellow intern have to split one muffin for breakfast
• You wear the same shirt at least four times a week
• You clean one house a week for some extra cash and get REALLY excited about twenty bucks
• You go to the movie theatre for church--not a movie because you can't afford it
• Going to Wal-Mart weekly is in your job description
• You really want to eat the church's ice cream out in the freezer, but you can't cause it's the church's
• Your pastor's garage is church storage
• A trailer takes residence in your driveway
• You can't even take a nap for twenty minutes because all you can think/talk about are the things you need to get done. The worst part is, when twenty minutes is up, you realize that you meant to take a nap.
• It's exciting to organize your portable church into color-coded tubs that are labeled with PINK duct tape
• You're writing this blog and you think it's funny
• You REALLY, REALLY, TRULY, love God and see Him move on a daily basis and realize that you wouldn't trade anything for the experience that you've had

An Epic Disaster Area + A Week in Pictures

WOW! We've been up to our ears in the to-do's lately. Last week Trista and I spent the majority of our week organizing everything for the children's ministry into tubs and loading the trailer. Talk about A LOT of work. We were running around all over the place. Kent and Jenni's basement looked like a disaster area. It was indeed an "Epic" disaster. Tuesday we continued on doing our summer fun days at the Andover Library and then we also participated in "National Night Out" Tuesday night. It was a fun night hosted by the Andover Police Department for the community. Thursday we had our first training meeting for all of our volunteers, which went REALLY well. WE had around 22 people there. It was a great time. Trista and I printed up around 700 peices of paper and made them into packets, etc. for training and other necessities for our children's ministry. Kent attended a conference on Thursday and Friday and then I went to see my good man, Kyle, in Mulvane on Friday/Saturday. Kyle finally got back from Project Transformation, an urban ministry in the Dallas, TX area that he had been working with all summer. It was soo good to catch up with one another and talk about how God moved during the summer! Kyle showed me probably 9834759876039 pictures from his time in Dallas. We went through each picture and he named every child in each picture. Talk about a guy with a good memory :), and talk about a guy who truly, truly loved his kids and God this summer. Kyle Just...I enjoyed seeing your heart come alive this summer, and I know those kids will miss having "Mr. Kyle" around. Cheers to PT.

On another note, we had our first "Trial Run" for our church plant on Sunday. There were a few hitches here and there, but altogether things went amazingly well. Honestly, we couldn't have asked for better volunteers. Everyone worked together SO well. I can't explain what it feels like to see what you've been working on become real...