Students are BACK!

Last Saturday we dove head first into student ministry at Penn State. At 8 am we headed about an hour away from State College to a camp for a leadership retreat. Almost 60 juniors and seniors from PSU joined us around 10 am who will be leading bible studies this year. The group is called "Oaks" from Isaiah 61 and will continue to meet for bible study prep and training on Monday nights. Each of us (nate and caroline) will help co-lead an "Oaks" group on Monday nights of about 8-10 men and women (respectively). This is an addition to the student(s) we will disciple and co-lead a freshmen bible study with. Confused yet? Its actually a pretty well organized system but I dont know how well I just explained it.

Saturday morning we spent time looking at Matthew 9- casting vision for why we want to lead new bible studies, especially with freshmen. This is the passage where Jesus talks about the harvest being plentiful but the workers are few. Despite there being SO many campus ministries at Penn State, maybe 4000 students are involved (generously) which leaves 40,000 students unreached. How can we tell them about Jesus??!!

Saturday afternoon we had some fun- and this is the only photo of the time I took:

Saturday afternoon they had a sweet time of prayer and personal reflection. I napped:) And Nate got to lead worship of a few songs for the time. Many people told me how great he was- yea! Way to go Nate!

Saturday night I got to connect with Anna and Tara, the juniors I am leading bible study with. Both are sweet girls who are excited to lead this year. I got to know them even better this week as we followed up with spiritual interest surveys in freshmen dorms. In just a little while I will grab dinner with them and hopefully some freshmen women who will join our bible study this year!

Saturday night we went over the monday meetings and some housekeeping items, but ended with smores and bonfire (again, i went to bed...)

Sunday we finished up the weekend with some funny skits about following up with people in their dorm rooms. Along with a devotional about evangelism and what it means.

All in all it was a great weekend, though a bit exhausting. Nate is leading with super senior Adam who is awesome. They spent time together this week in the dorm Tenor meeting guys. Last night they met up with some of them for ice cream and we will all try to start our bible study meetings on Monday night!

The rest of the week was filled up with manning survey tables where we give out candy and spiritual interest surveys for a raffle prize to find people who may be interested in bible study or learning about Jesus. Each night (mon-wed) we went into the dorms to follow up with those people. When we werent on campus, we trying to finish up things in our apartment- its really starting to feel like home- yea!

Tonight we are headed to our first NavNight- the large group meeting. It should be a great, if not overwhelming time!