Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone,

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year! I wanted to let you all know that I appreciate your support so much, and it's been an honor to have you as my support team for this semester of the internship. This Saturday I leave for Urbana, but I'll be back on the 1st and will be sure to let you know all about what happens. In the meantime, please continue to pray for the event, especially that all the students would get there safely and that they would be touched by the messages from the speakers. Again, thank you for your prayer and financial support, and I'll see you next year!

His servant,
Michael

"All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel'—which means, 'God with us.'"
- Matthew 1:22-23

Christmas Joy

It's finals week at UNM, and so InterVarsity is officially coming to a close for the semester. I've really enjoyed it; all of the new experiences of the internship have been wonderful, and I already can hardly wait till next semester when we start back up again. For the time being, though, it'll be nice to have a bit of a break, some time with family, and of course the Christmas season.

That's not to mention Urbana, which I'll be attending as a part of the internship. It's a huge Christian missions conference organized by InterVarsity and is going to be attended by over 18,000 students from around the nation for 5 days in St. Louis. It has some great speakers, music, seminars, and Bible study, and I've been looking forward to it ever since I went last in '06. (It only happens once every 3 years.) I'm going to help with the morning manuscript times, where over 200 students will come together to study different passages from John 1-4. I'll actually be helping Hans as his A/V tech, and we'll also be helped by his wife Jill and the previous IV president at UNM, Glory. In the afternoons I'll help with the seminars, so I'll be sitting in on some great presentations on all things missions-related. Plus, as an added bonus, there will be a mini reunion of the Kenya GP team, which will be really great. Needless to say, it'll be a great week. Please do pray, though, for the conference - for travel, safety, open hearts, and powerful movement of the Holy Spirit during that time. This will be a transformational time for many students, and they could use all your prayers for their time at Urbana. I ask that you pray also for me, that I would be able to do all I need to help these students grow close to God during their time there.

As IV has come to a close for the semester, it's been a time of mixed emotions. For some reason I've been feeling a mix of joy and melancholy. It really came into focus last Thursday with our last Large Group, which was a testimony night. We had two of the students who came to Christ come and speak about their conversions, which was really great. Then we opened up the floor to anyone else who wanted to share about what God has been doing in their lives. It was so great to hear those stories of God at work, and many of the students who spoke talked about how meaningful IV has been in their lives and exhortations to the others to not let the opportunities IV presents pass them by. We're saying goodbye to some of those students as they graduate this semester, and so those final messages were especially poignant, at least for me.

Yet as I went back home that night, as I thought about the friends we'll be missing at IV next semester, I couldn't help but think about what goodbyes mean to Christians. For us, there is no final goodbye. I know that this kind of thinking usually come around experiences of great loss - the loss of a family member or the final goodbye to a childhood friend - but it still holds true for these smaller farewells. I thought about the people that stepped up and talked about the work of God in their lives, and I thought these are the people I'll spend an eternity with. What a great priviledge! As Christmas approaches, I hope that you will see past the distractions of the season and remember the One Who made such hope possible for us. He is our joy.

"For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel."
- Luke 2:30-32

Just a little further...

So I know that I promised that I would tell you how last week's Kenya-themed night went, and let me say, it was awesome! We had a bunch of people dressed Kenyan-style with either fancy skirts or slacks. We started by giving everyone Kenyan Christian greetings as they entered ("Bwana asifiwe!" usually followed by surprised and awkward looks from the students). Then we moved into some Kenyan worship, involving a mix of English and Swahili songs plus dancing. Heydon, the Large Group coordinator, then called up a couple students for spontaneous messages, which of course they didn't know about beforehand. The two ended up being Jenn our chapter President and Josh, one of the Small Group Coordinators, and they actually did really well! Following the messages, we showed the Kenya GP promo video (which, by the way, you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As0SEYDJAx4) to let people know a bit about the project, then Hans and I each took a few minutes to talk about our assignments and the project in general plus show off some pictures. We ended with some Q&A time and then, after much hand shaking and more "Bwana asifiwes", treated everyone to some Kenyan chai and biscuits. I had a great time, and I know a lot of other people really enjoyed the night. I don't really know if we've convinced anyone to try out the project for this coming summer, but I'm really hoping that we've at least piqued some interest.

Besides that, most of the stuff going on is starting to wind down. This is the last week of classes at UNM before finals start, and so it's also the last week that IV will pretty much be doing anything. Last small group meetings, last prayer times, final Large Group.... We're doing less planning for our current events and starting to look to the next semester. We have pretty much everything major fleshed out for the first few weeks of next semester, and I'm really pleased with a lot of the stuff we have planned.

The only thing that isn't really set in stone yet for me is my small group. Javier hasn't really been able to put forth the commitment he needs to for co-leading with me, and I'm not really sure that he'll be willing or able to change much for the coming semester. I/we also need to figure out if the group will continue to go through the Truth Project, which everyone seems to be enjoying so far, or if we'll change gears and start going through the book of James to include more Bible study, which the leaders are trying to promote more. Either way, I'm sure it'll all turn out well in the end. Please just be praying for us to make the right choices so that we can be in God's will.

We also have a few end-of-semester events coming up which should be pretty great. This Friday we're going to have our annual Christmas part, complete with potluck and white elephant gift exchange. It'll be a great time for everyone to relax and enjoy some time together before finals and the break. Then for the first two days of finals we're going to be giving away free coffee, hot cocoa, and tea in the morning to students to help make finals a little more bearable. It's not an evangelistic event or anything; it's just a way for us to serve the students and show them a little of God's love.

"There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day."
- Psalms 46:4-5

Changing Gears

Well, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving this past weekend. Mine was good. Not great, but still good. We went down to Silver City to see my Grandfather. It's generally the only time each year that I get to see him, and this year it was the first time in a while that the whole family had been together since my brother started going to NMSU down in Las Cruces. My Grandfather is certainly starting to show his age (and not really making much attempt to take care of himself), so he spent most of our time there asleep, but we were still able to interact with him a little and serve him by helping around his house doing yard work. It certainly wasn't as lively a Thanksgiving as we've had in years past, but it was still good, and I'm glad to have been able to go down there to see him. I would appreciate if you would pray for my Grandfather and my whole family as we'll likely need to make some decisions soon about how best to care for him.

These past few weeks have been a little strange due to both the Thanksgiving break and the short trip to the University of Arizona I took two weeks ago. No Large Groups, no Small Group, no meetings... it almost feels like I haven't been around IV people for like a month. I did really enjoy my trip to U of A. I was just there for a night to see how they run the Large Group at their chapter as part of a report I am supposed to write on best practices for Large Groups. I've never really interacted much with their chapter, though we do meet once a year for our regional end of the year retreat up in Colorado. It was a quick trip; landed at 5:30, dinner with their Large Group Coordinator at 5:45 to chat about what they do, Large Group from 6:30 to about 10:00, then sleep at the house of some guys in the chapter until 5:15 when I needed to get to my flight. My plane got back into Abq. at 8:15 the next morning - just enough time for me to have some breakfast and get to my other job. Whew! I was really glad to be there, though. They're really trying to be an outreach-based chapter, and it's definitely working for them. Everyone I interacted with told me about the 6 conversions they've had so far this year, and there was just an atmosphere of excitement about all that the chapter was doing. We're not quite there at UNM yet, but I think I got some good ideas from the U of A crowd, and I look forward to seeing how we can use some of them ourselves.

Speaking of looking ahead, we're now at the part of the semester where we need to start reflecting on how we've been doing as a chapter and start planning for next semester. This has meant a lot of reflection at our last few meetings and trying to make an honest assessment of things like worship, Small Groups, Large Group, etc. What have we been focusing on? What did or didn't work? How do the students need to grow? What do we feel like God is calling us into for the next year? I actually really enjoy this kind of planning and all of the energy that is generated as we come up with ideas of how we could do things even better next year.

One possible change that would really affect me would be the possibility of restructuring the Truth Project Small Group that I've been leading. I've really enjoyed leading the group, but my co-leader is... unreliable. He's generally missed about half of our planning times, leaders meetings, and even the actual Small Group, often without any forewarning unless I specifically call him up. It's not the best situation, and so I need to see what his desires are for this coming year and if he wants to stick it out with the group. The other side of the coin is that Rod, my internship "overseer", feels that I should try to do a manuscript Bible study instead. Manuscripting is kind of an IV trademark: an inductive Bible study that allows people to really analyze the text without much presupposition. I always like the method when I do it, and I think it could be really good, but I don't want to leave the Truth Project hanging mid-way through, especially since I feel so many people in the chapter need a strong grounding in what the Christian worldview is, which is the main focus of the Truth Project. I would really appreciate your prayers as I try to seek guidance in what I need to do for the next semester.

My Dad has started the next round of his chemo therapy, and thankfully he still seems really healthy. He hasn't even started loosing his hair yet, though apparently my Mom's Bible Study has started a pool on when that will happen. This is only the second round, and they will continue in 3-week intervals until about mid-February, so there is certainly still time for him to start sporting a wig, but for now he still retains a firm grip on his healthy head of hair. Thank you all so much for praying for him during this time, and please continue to remember him as we continue through this ordeal.

I get another chance to talk about Kenya tomorrow, this time at the Large Group. So excited! We're totally going over the top with a Kenya-style night, complete with chai and vigorous hand shaking. I'm really looking forward to it, and I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes next week. In the meantime, please pray that it'll go well and that maybe we can inspire some of the students to try to get on a missions trip themselves this summer.

"For in him we live and move and have our being."
- Acts 17:28a