I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! I have here my latest ministry update, basically a review of where the internship has taken me since October. Many of you will receive this update via email, but here it is for the rest of you. Also, you may notice that I have given the site a bit of a face lift (the new title banner). Let me know what you think - like it? hate it? indifferent? Oh, and I plan on having a more complete description of Urbana up in a few days, maybe even this weekend, but I couldn't really fit everything I wanted to say in this letter. In any case, here it is:
Hello to all my wonderful supporters!
Welcome to the new year! A lot of exciting stuff has happened since I last wrote to you all in October. But before we get into all that, I first want to thank you all once again for your wonderful support. Your financial gifts and prayers have been such a blessing, and without you all I wouldn't have the blessing of being able to work at the UNM campus. Thank you so much!
November started with another big evangelistic event for the chapter. However, this time I was the one who had to prepare it - a huge challenge for me! We had a table with a big, blank display board on it and at the top wrote "What do you hate about Christianity?" For two days we invited students passing by to write their thoughts on the board and then spend some time talking about what experiences they have had with Christians that lead to those feelings. Honestly, I was a little worried going in that the event would result in a lot of heated arguments, but by God's grace we were able avoid anything like that, though there was a lot of discussion on some controversial topics. We had great, honest responses from Christians and non-Christians alike, including frustration with hypocrisy, anger toward the hateful attitude Christians often have for people "under sin", and heartfelt requests that Christians return to the heat of the Gospel: the love God shows to sinners in spite of their sin. While we didn't have anyone who wanted to make a commitment to faith, I'm sure that God used us to soften some hearts.
I also gave my first talk at Large Group that week as a kind of follow-up to the table. I spoke on John 9, where Jesus heals a man born blind. Unfortunately, though we passed out at least 70 fliers through the tables, we only had 1 new visitor that week. No one decided to take up the call to faith, and I feel like the talk itself could have gone much better (though it certainly wasn't terrible). All the same, I'm glad I was able to have the opportunity even if my expectations happened to be a little different from God's.
Another big development of the past months was the creation of my discipleship group. I have the privilege of discipling 3 guys from the chapter, and we are going through the book Hearing God by Dallas Willard. It's been a very fulfilling experience for me and the guys as well. We've had a great time getting to know one another, and I'm excited to see what will come out of the group as we put what we've learned into practice in the coming semester.
We've had a lot of other awesome events this semester, and it's really been a blessing to be a part of them. We had guys' and girls' nights out that lead to some great fun and fellowship. We had a special AIDS awareness night for our Large Group meeting that challenged students with the reality of the worldwide AIDS epidemic and resulted in $340 being raised for World Vision. We had a Kenya night that Hans and I lead in authentic Kenyan style, including interactive Swahili songs and chai time. So great!
It would of course be terrible of me to omit the biggest event of the semester, though: Urbana! InterVarsity organizes the Urbana conference - the largest college age missions conference in the world - once every 3 years, and I was privileged to be a part of it this year. We had 16 students attend in St. Louis this year, which is really amazing considering the conference generally costs students upwards of $700 to attend. It was worth every cent, though. The theme for this year was "He made His dwelling among us", coming from our study of John 1-4. Our speakers and expositors used these scriptures to look at the what the incarnation really meant for Jesus's ministry and challenged us to live "incarnationally" as we minister to those God has put on our hearts. We were also given a new look at the world as we learned about the issues of poverty, the modern slave trade, the 2 billion completely unreached people around the world, and the dangers of approaching missions from a business mindset. As part of the Urbana staff, I got to help my fellow staff worker Hans do manuscript Bible study in the mornings with around 120 students and then spent the afternoons assisting with the different seminars, which covered specific topics like contextualizing worship for different ethnic groups or using art in a missions environment. I and the rest of the 17,000 students got to experience all this over the 5 days of the conference, plus some excellent worship involving songs in English, Spanish, French, Swahili, and even Arabic. And hardly begins to describe all that we got to experience that week! In fact, I would encourage all of you to visit the Urbana website and check out some videos; I especially recommend Oscar Muriu's talk on incarnational missions.
I wish I could tell you all more, but honestly it is very hard to describe just how impactful such a week can be. I will say, though, I am really excited by how much the conference has already influenced so many who went, challenging them to make bold changes to the ways the live or the plans they are making for the future in response to God's mission in the world. Please please pray for all who attended. These are the next generation of missionaries, and they need all the prayer they can get to make sure that Urbana isn't just a one-time event that fades into the background of college.
Finally, I would like to let you know about some of my current prayer needs.
- I am almost finished with my fundraising: only about $100 left! Praise God for His provision, and please pray that I would find the last couple of donors who would help me complete my fundraising.
- Please pray for the coming semester and all of the InterVarsity events starting back up. I'll be leading another Bible study, this time on James, as well as a prayer group and my discipleship group. We will also have our spring conference in February, so please pray for the preparations and execution, that it would be a time of rest and growth for the students.
- As I mentioned, it is essential that Urbana isn't forgotten as the business of school sets in. Please pray that the students would be moved to be missional on campus and that we as a chapter would grow stronger in our evangelistic efforts.
- I will soon need to decide whether or not I will go onto full-time staff with InterVarsity after this year or if I will pursue some other line of work. This ministry has been a great blessing to me so far, but my greatest goal is to be where God wants me to be. Please pray for discernment as I try to determine where God wants me to be in the coming years.
- My father has is about half done with his chemo treatments, and a huge praise is that he has had almost no side-effects as a result. He still has all of his hair (almost a frustration since he doesn't want to cut it if it will just fall out...) and is still busy around the house re-tiling floors and repainting rooms. Please continue to pray for healing and for the chemo to be effective as he undergoes the final 3 treatments coming up. Pray also for my family as a whole, that we would use this experience to grow in our knowledge and faith in God.
His servant,
Michael
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