We are preparing to drive to Oklahoma.  My mom called this morning and had to let us know that my dad suddenly died this morning.  It is an incredible shock.  We appreciate your prayers as we drive to be with my mom and sister and family and deal with the details.

Heb. 13:7

Our leaders at Challenge are called Losers (remind me to explain this more fully).  Normally the Losers meet once a month on Sunday afternoon, which is a loser kind of time because it always feels like nap time, not meeting time.  However, our last meeting was a good reminder of why we are here.  It was kind of exciting, even though there were many yawns.

Bobby asked people to share those they knew who had a new relationship with Jesus and those who were close.  Without giving names here was our list:

M, C, C, H, G, L, M, and T (and many of our Losers were missing due to serving at a children’s camp)
These are those who we have relationships with and who are moving closer to Jesus.  So pray for these letters who are real students on a journey to know Jesus and whose paths have intersected with ours. And pray for us to do all we can to help them move closer to knowing Jesus.

Okay. I confess my apprehension in blogging. Its the internal conflict I feel. I would love to write a blog that delivers not only content, but also witty, funny, maybe sometimes quirky glimpses into our lives and ministry. But then what generally comes out is plain toast without even any butter. I desire for people to read the blog and laugh out loud, cry softly, sing, show some display of delight, etc. as they also discover what is happening in Challenge at CU. And I never feel I come close to this expectation.

I also struggle with finding time to create such a blog. When, in the course of a day, ministry and family things have been knotted together, or unknotted, I find I just want to sleep, and perchance, dream of writing the perfect blog.

So I found my hero (click on this highlighted word for the link) quite by accident. It has nothing to do with ministry or anything else, but made me laugh. Check out it out for a witty blog. Maybe someday I can attain this height and the coloradogregory blog will deliver all the goods I hope for. Until then I will keep writing as able and attempt to at least get a few goods to you.

We had a really good study with the freshmen this week and a new guy.  Aaron had not been able to attend last semester because of school, but got connected enough to start coming this semester.  The topic was God as supreme authority.  Last week was God as a Loving Creator.  Now people don’t mind the latter so much,  thinking of God as loving is not so bad.  But when we bring up the notion that since He created everything He is also in authority over everything, people don’t seem to get the same warm fuzzys.  So we discussed this and dealt with several verses about God’s authority.  Read Paul’s speech in Acts 17:22-31.

This discussion also challenged us with making sure we are under God’s authority.

Wow!  Right when we least expected it, a great house went up for sale last Friday.  We had been looking at the piece of junk/BAD foundation house when a call came about a house down the street from the Pruett’s (the Challenge director and our temporary home until Nov.)  It was listed at a great price and looked really good.  So Julee, after stepping off a plane from a week in OK, and I looked at it the same day and made an offer the next morning.  It seems to be a God thing from location, to price, to provision and is more than we could have asked for.

Now of course it is not ours yet (we close March 3), but we are thrilled to have the opportunity to own a house in Boulder, where you get less house for more money.  This will put us just 3 miles from campus and students will be able to easily get to our home to hang out, pray, party, eat, be involved with family life, sleep, eat, etc.  And I can ride a bike or bus to campus, or even walk.  So because ministry here is so centered around our homes this is an answer to prayer and something I wasn’t sure could happen like this.

We appreciate your prayers as we move forward.  We are also very aware of how God has led us here and desires us to serve Him at CU and invest our lives in students.

Table talk Tuesday is continuing.  Today’s topic was “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  Of course it is hard to answer this in a few moments at a table - books are written discussing the topic.

We did have a good opening discussion.  First we began with what the question assumes.  This actually took a good bit of time as we brought up issues of who or what is the determiner of who is good or what is bad.   Without a solid basis the question doesn’t work too well.

The discussion moved to how God, in His love, gave us as people freedom to choose.  When Adam and Eve exercised that choice to choose against God, the door was open for good things and bad things to occur or be chosen to be done by people.

We also talked about how we just cannot comprehend all of God’s ways.  It does seem that He sees a picture we can’t and that this picture (just like pictures we can see) is made of the blend,or juxtaposition of dark and light and shading.  So even some hard things we experience are contrasted with a blessing, or understanding of God, or etc.

There is also an enemy contending against us.

Finally, the ultimate reality we are living for is beyond this life and that perspective can help deal with hard things and great things.  Sometimes, though, we just don’t know.

I didn’t intend to answer the whole question in this blog, but to let you in on a ministry moment.  If you have any comments, please add them.  Who knows where we may end up!

Thank you for your prayers.  The house opportunity we were looking at was just not good at all, so wisdom said to walk away - and we did.  And then an opportunity came out of nowhere for another house.  I will have more info for you tomorrow.  Very exciting.