Out of Breath

The semester has definitely started! The past couple of weeks have included my first on-campus events as an InterVarsity intern, and we really hit the ground running. So far I've done 5 days of tabling (sitting at a table handing out info about IV), 2 days of evangelism, a game night, an ice cream social/snowball fight (yes, a snowball fight in the middle of August in New Mexico - good times), the first Large Group meeting of the year, and an early breakfast this morning at Denney's. Oh, and of course there were other events like glow-in-the-dark frisbee that I couldn't make it to; I'm only human! Needless to say, I've been a little busy lately....

Man has it been wonderful, though. We've been able to meet a lot of new students who want to get involved in IV and engaged even more. For the evangelism days, we ran an interactive display known as a proxe station, theming ours around the physical and spiritual thirsts people have and using those discussions as a jump-off point for sharing the Gospel with students. A lot of people stopped by, shared their views, and were even willing to listen to what we had to offer as Christians. We didn't see any conversions these two days, but we did have a few students interested in getting involved in learning more about the Bible with us!

We used the first Large Group meeting of the semester as a kind of follow-up event for the proxe station, and we tried something new this year. Usually, the first night is a fun time for people to hang out after a summer apart and to get to welcome new students with fun events, but we decided that we wanted to have an evangelistic focus right from the start, so we had our area director Rod Pauls come and give a message ending in a Gospel presentation. Honestly, I'm always a little skeptical when it comes to the effectiveness of alter calls after sermons, partially since I've seen many alter calls do little but suck the energy out of a room. No one is going to stand up, but we're all going to sit awkwardly waiting for something to happen. My trepidation was unwarranted, however, and we actually had 3 students that wanted to make professions of faith, praise the LORD! Not even a week into school, and we're already seeing conversions - I can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store!

Besides that, my life has mainly consisted of trying to finish really moving into my new place. It's mostly odds and ends right now like getting a toaster, some knives, and the cables for my TV. Unfortunately, we don't have our internet configured yet, so I always need to go somewhere else to do anything online. That's part of the reason that I haven't updated as much as I wanted to, and also why I haven't been able to get more pictures up. It's nearly impossible apparently to find a computer with both internet access and a reader for my memory card with all the images. Oh well. In any case, I'll try to get more of them up as soon as I can, and hopefully I'll be able to post more regularly soon as well.

Please continue to pray for my fundraising to go well. I'm a little under 70% funded right now, and more support is slowly coming in, thank God! Also, praise that the IV stuff so far has been going well, and that we've been able to see students come to Christ already. Please pray for the students, though, that they would be able to get hooked into some good churches. Please also pray for the events we have coming up this next week: a movie night/discussion tonight, a water balloon fight tomorrow, two more days of tabling, the next Large Group, and lots of meetings. Such is the life of an intern.

"Open for me the gates of righteousness;
I will enter and give thanks to the LORD.
- Psalm 118: 19