Echoes of the Spirit still dwell

+10 bonus points to anyone who understands the title. :-)

So I got back from Chapter Camp a couple of days ago, and I'm still overwhelmed by the things that God did while I was there. For those of you who don't know, Chapter Camp is a week-long retreat for the InterVarsity chapters in the Rocky Mountain Region that happens every year. My week included the chapters from New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Montana, with a total of about 140 students. The camp is always an incredible experience, but I think this year was by far the best I've been to, maybe even one of the most spiritually uplifting weeks I've ever had! Here's an incredibly small sample of some of the things I experienced during that time:

• The lessons for the week were centered around the first 4 chapters of the Gospel of John. Through our chapter study times and the sermons from the speaker, Doug, I was really challenged to not simply understand the scriptures but really apply them to my life. We saw how Jesus invited people to "come and see", not go and see, meaning that we likewise need to be willing to take people on the journey of discovering God's love rather than simply sharing with them and leaving it at that. I personally was really convicted in my lack of any real effort to try to be that kind of person for the non-Christians in my life; it's something I'm now going to try to change, and I hope that you all will keep me accountable in this.
• I had a really great time really connecting for the first time with the UNM chapter. I've hung out with them a lot before in previous years, but this was the first time that I was really able to just focus on them, and I'm really glad that it's such a great chapter with such a desire to see more in the coming year.
• I and a few others from the Tech and UNM chapters participated in a 1/8th marathon - about 4 miles total. It was a really great time, even though I was completely unprepared. I'd never before run quite that far at once, and certainly not at the elevations of the area around the camp. I'm glad I was able to do it, though, and I think that doing the race is going to be incentive for me to run more often and just generally try to get into better shape.
  
• We saw 4 people come to Christ, praise the Lord! In fact, one of them was from UNM, and we had the privilege of baptizing him and another UNM student (who wanted a symbolic break from some things in his past) in the cold, cold water of the stream running through the camp. Major props to Hans the UNM staff worker for his willingness to perform this service for those students even though the water was, well, essentially arctic.
• We were able to witness a number of really great testimonies from many of the students. These ranged from people describing what God has done for them at camp to stories of God's restoration to prayer requests for the work of God in other parts of the world. We even had one girl (who, by the way, will be going on the Kenya project as well), who had been having trouble with her knee even after several surgeries and was having a hard time getting around the camp. Her chapter laid hands on her and prayed for healing during one of our worship sessions, and she was healed, running around the camp with tears of joy on her face praising God with all her might! I've never personally witnessed a faith healing, especially not one where I have seen the transition so clearly, and it was just amazing to see how the power of God was so real during the week in actions such as this.
• One of the sermons involved a call to those who wanted to be more missionally-minded on their campuses. It wasn't just an indication that we wanted to do more witnessing on our campuses, but that we were willing to let God mess up our schedules, our housing arrangements, our grades, and our relationships to be able to work through us as He wills. At least half of the camp chose to publicly make this decision, including me, and I'm sure that in most of the cases this won't simply turn out to be a mountain-top experience that goes nowhere. I believe that God is going to actually work through these commitments, and I've already seen evidence of this. During the UNM chapter discussion of the night and of how to really put our commitments into practice, one of the girls received a vision of me and Hans leading the students between the carcasses of two bulls. This is a symbol from Old Testament times that represents the most serious of covanents, for instance when God tells Abram that he will be the father of many nations. I'm so encouraged that God is showing how He too is on board with the commitments we made, and I'm sure that there will be something awesome to come out of all of this in the coming year!

These are just the tip of the spiritual iceberg I hit during my time at camp, and I wish I could tell you about the friends I made, the prayers I had answered, the worship, and the overall wonderful time of communion I had with God and all those around me. Something big is going to come out of these experiences, and I can hardly wait to see what it will be!

Quick update: I'm pretty much done with my fundraising for Kenya thanks to all of the donations that you have made, and I've started making some progress on the internship funding as well. I still have about $12,000 to raise, but I'm also starting to get some meetings set up to ask people to be part of my support team. Please continue to pray that I will be able to have the financial and prayer support that I will need for the coming year and that I would be able to effectively relate to people the work I will be involved with and the vision God has given me for how He wants to transform UNM.