In the last 5 weeks we have had:

- our leadership retreat to get prepared for the first weeks of school

-  tables on campus to meet new students.

-  4 freshmen bible studies at our house.

-  4 weekly meetings on campus.

-  4 table talks

-  many individual meetings with students.

-  3 leaders weekly meetings.

-  2 Friday night things

-  2 weekend retreats.

-  and even a little sleep.

While not exhaustive, this is a little idea of what has been happening.  The first weeks of school are tiring, yet a tremendous time of meeting new students, learning about them, helping them adjust, and presenting a vision for investing in their spiritual life.

What fun!!  I guess we can sleep in heaven.

Ah Fall!  The time when a young woman’s fancy turns to 4 and half hours of orientation for the school of education. Well, at least the girl next to me at our Challenge information table. Well, maybe not her fancy.  Well, OK, she is going because she has to and she would like to graduate.

Ah Fall!  When young freshmen start jumping through the hoops, or at least the ones who are thinking about graduation in a few years.  The time when they arrive on campus with that lethal mix of excitement, fear, overwhelmedness, anticipation, overprotective parents (and underprotective as well), a need for textbooks and helpful friends, and of course eager for football.

And we are here doing what we can to meet them and trying to connect with them enough that they will check out Challenge.  Its a busy time and a critical time.  The first 4 weeks are when most students develop their routines and decide how what is important to them.

So pray for us as we get after it here at CU.

Today we celebrate Josh’s 15th birthday. It should be a lot of fun, especially with the fireworks the city of Boulder will be displaying for him (at least thats what we tell him). He quit believing us a long time ago.

Next week Julee and I will speak with students at a training program thats taking place in Denver. That should be a lot of fun also.

The window is closer to completion. The window itself is in now, just having to make modifications in order to install some structural steel. You should see the 1/2 inch concrete screws we are using - Tim the tool man would be proud. We could screw whole houses together with these things.

Continue to pray for our team in South Asia. They have continued to see fruit from their labor and God has been teaching them deep things. Our challenge is to shepherd them so that the things they are learning stick and to help them process all that has happened this summer. Also our good friends who were on staff here at Challenge will be moving there on July 10, so they would appreciate your prayers for their challenging transition.

We will be receiving many freshman contacts soon and will begin the process of connecting with them. Please lift up these freshman whom we don’t know - yet - that God will encourage their hearts and connect them even closer to us and Him over next year.

Colossians 2:1

Our CU team in South Asia has sent back a good report.  In the last week 8 new believers have joined our Family and several others are close.  Please pray for them as they are over their honeymoon period and adjusting.  Also as they begin to disciple their new brothers and sisters and continue to make the word of God fully known.

I hope no one has been holding their breath in eager expectation for the next blog. If so and you are reading this, you might want to contact Guinness Book. I not sure, but I think you might have done something big.

As for us, we haven’t been holding our breath, but doing what we do after school ends: a wedding, a two-week road trip family vacation (a little longer than usual, but what a great time.  And when is the last time you ate fresh grouper throat just pulled from the Gulf?), starting some projects that we can’t do in the fuller flow of ministry (an egress window in a basement bedroom is the big one now), sending off summer teams, and starting up summer ministry.

We have a team of 7 in South Asia for the summer.  Please be praying for them as they are sowing a lot of seed and helping with some church planting.  They are also way hotter than they are used to in Colorado, so pray they can maintain good attitudes amidst the oppressive heat and spiritual climate.

There are also 9 at a training program in Denver.  They are working full time jobs during the week and involved with small groups,  training, and service during the evenings and weekends.  The entire group spent a Saturday at our house and the Pruett’s house working on various projects.  The goal was to wear them out and that we did.  This is a valuable part of training as it displays character which students have.  You can see who works hard and who hardly works.  You can also teach some good skills and show what hard work looks like.  Three small groups even came back the next week for more glorious hard work.

We also just added a hamster to the family.  Pretty exciting.

In all things Christ.

We have just wrapped up our end of the year frenzyflurry.  Wow!  Things don’t wind down, they wind up and up and up and then drop off suddenly.  Last Wednesday we had our last meeting, which for us is a Spring Banquet.  It was very encouraging.  The seniors graduating were honored by their peers, our Japanese friends were recognized and given special gifts, a slide show recapped the whole year, and we had really good food at a great restaurant in the foothills.

Following the banquet were 2 days of staff meetings to evaluate, organize, and plan.  And then 3 days of meetings with all the Challenge directors and staff from around the state.  This is also a very encouraging time as we are with like-hearted laborers and able to reconnect.

So now we take a deep breath and then get after it during the summer.

I wish I had a good quote to put here about life and how it is hard, but I don’t.  Life is hard.

To catch you up with things.  We have moved into a house in Boulder that we plan on staying in for a long time.  It is a God story all the way.  It also made the 5th house we have lived in over a 10 month span.  God has been gracious, but it has not been easy.  Maybe grace is not always comfortable.  We are so grateful for God’s leading in all this and for His provision and are amazed each morning that we live in Boulder and are able to invest our lives in students at CU.

Dealing with my father’s death has also not been easy.  I think I went through a period of slight depression just after we moved.  My cup was a bit too full.  And again, God has been a faithful companion and blessed me with a super wife, kids, and friends.

And ministry has continued as the main thing.  The spring break trip was incredible - THANK YOU for your prayer.  Bobby said that, for him, this trip was the best in 20 years with the most spiritual component.  It was hard, but really good.  The students are ready for next year’s trip already.

We have also continued with our freshmen study and have had a great time.  Just two weeks ago a girl who was there for the first time shared her story about how she had just accepted Christ.  She had some relationships with our students through the semester, but hadn’t come to the study yet, or to church until the day before she shared her story with us.  Very exciting stuff.

We are just now in a break between hearing from students individually about how God has changed them over this year.  WOW!  We have been very encouraged with the way God has worked in their hearts.  One said they now know what it looks like to have a real relationship with God,  another said that they have learned how to trust God and not themself, another shared how she has had good relationships with girls for the first time and is learning about the Bible and God for the first time, another said he has grown in understanding the lordship of Jesus and has learned how to better deal with relational conflict, etc.  This has been wonderful.  (they have also given good critique of things that could be better)

So, in short, we are pressing on to honor God and impact students as best we can.

Thank you for your involvement in our ministry and for your comments on this blog.  On with the student meetings!

Its spring break.  This usually means a ‘break’ for students and staff alike.  We, however, usually think that summer is not so far away, so we can break then.  So for us spring break means an opportunity to get students to a different place with fewer distractions, or at least different distractions, in order to hear from God about their heart, life, vision.  (Other trips mean a chance to work hard).

So 22 drove away last night heading for California.  The goal is to see places through Jesus’ eyes.  This trip is more about vision than serving, and so we will plan a good serving trip for the future (so that we don’t just see with Jesus’ eyes, but serve with His hands and feet).

Please be in prayer for the group this week.  It will be an exhausting trip (not exactly the spring break most people long for), but has the potential to be life changing experience - and not just from entering the frigid Pacific waters for the first time - but from coming into contact with people whom God has placed there to make disciples of all nations.  It is our experience that God uses trips like this to change students so that the rest of their lives are given to serving Him faithfully wherever students scatter to.  Our thinking goes beyond just having a fun week while you are a college student.

In reading Mark 4:26-29, I had these thoughts:

- The gospel in people’s lives takes time.

- We need to be good farmers, not just harvester’s. So evangelism and ministry is farming: knowing how to sow and different ways of sowing, cultivating and fertilizing, and then harvesting at the right time.

- This can make ministry frustrating at times because we want to see results quickly. Jesus said that growth takes time. There is a part of growth the farmer has no control over.

For ministry it made me think of questions to help evaluate.

Therefore, questions to evaluate ministry would be:

- What have we done to sow seed: the gospel, character qualities, vision?

- Which seed did we sow last week?

- What are we doing to watch over the seed and cultivate?

- How are we evaluating the readiness for harvest?

- Do we evaluate with just individuals, ministry as a whole, or both?

- Who is following up with whom?

- What seed have we sown across the ministry this semester through Challenge, small groups, retreats?

- What are we asking God to do with the seed and the plants?

I would welcome comments on these ideas to help us be faithful campus ministers at CU. We are doing our best to sow the gospel in several ways. It has been working best through relationships our students have with their peers. It has worked some through speaking on campus (Bobby speaks outside when the weather, and policy, allows). The whos new and whos close post mentions how this is going.

Weekly staff meetings  are a place we ponder these questions, evaluate, and try to be strategic with what we plan, so that even though there is a part of growth we have no control over, we can be the best farmers we can possibly be by working hard at those things we can control.

Please pray for us as we seek to be good farmers.

Ministry is continuing here at CU and has its ups and downs.

UPs: Our freshmen group has been really great. They are gaining teachable hearts and are responding to Jesus lordship in good ways. Almost all of them are going on our spring break trip to California. It will be a great vision trip as students see the greater LA area and USC campus and Las Vegas (briefly) through Jesus’ eyes. They will have time with several people who have planted churches there and really been through some ups and downs. There will also be some time at the US Center for World Mission in Pasadena. And a morning at The Price is Right will make it fun as well.

Table Talk Tuesdays are going well. Last week we started talking about Pharaoh and how God hardened his heart or how he hardened his heart. What is that all about? (as students would express it).

Other students are still considering Jesus and whether or not they want to follow Him.

Downs: Class and work has made it hard for some of our students to be involved as much this semester and we miss them. Some students are dealing with difficult things and their deciding to trust God is iffy. Life doesn’t seem to get easier, it gets harder.

Overall, we are grateful to be here and to be investing in students. We really do love it.