Monday, September 19, 2011

I'm back with New Student Outreach updates!

It's been a month and a half since my last post. I can't believe everything's that happened! I've been sick this weekend, so I wasn't able to visit my mom like I had hoped. She had to head back to the hospital last weekend, but she's out again. With her illness, a new staff partner, new NSO activities, some students stepping up and others kinda fizzling out, it's been an NSO of ups and downs. Thankfully, God's been with me through it all. I'll be updating this blog quite a bit over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here's my prayer requests and updates from New Student Outreach:

Pray for outreach events.
We will help students move in Aug. 21 and keep serving and meeting them for the next few weeks. Pray for growing relationships. Pray students start 3 GIGs (Groups Investigating God, seeker Bible studies). Finally, pray for our Small Group Leaders to plan risky new outreach events that draw many new students in.
Over 3 weeks, we gathered 250+ students' contact info, and we're still following up with them. We have at least 4 students interested in a GIG, with 1 starting this week. Our Small Group Leaders were bold to reach out, and made great connections.
Pray for missional Christians.
Pray for 20 new students to join our fellowship. Please pray that some of these students are "missional," looking for ways to follow God. We specifically need a worship leader.
We have at least 10 new students involved, and many more checking us out. Some are very missional. One new student didn't seem that interested in attending CrossRoads until I mentioned we were studying Philippians. Another who is still checking us out feels like it's her life mission to serve people. Old and new students are offering their voice, guitar, djembe, keyboard, violin, and trumpet for worship. We have so many students volunteering to be on worship team, we may have more students leading than being led!
Pray for August 25th.
I was planning on speaking Aug. 25 at our first Large Group. But my mother will be in surgery for an acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor on the nerve that runs from your ear to your brain. It's a pretty poor stopgap measure. They won't be able to get all of the tumor and there's a chance of minor facial paralysis. It's 8 hours and will take a month to recover from. First, please pray for healing beforehand. For my whole family, ask God for peace, comfort, and trust in him. Finally, please pray for Fern, UH alum and speaker at Breakthrough spring training conference, who will be filling in for me last minute. Large Group that night may be the only time a student comes to one of our events, potentially the only time they hear the gospel. Pray for open ears and ready hearts!
My mother's surgery went miraculously well. The surgeons believe they got all of the tumor out, and there was almost no facial paralysis. I felt God's peace, and was glad to be there with my mom before and after the surgery. But there have been several minor complications since the surgery. Please continue to pray for complete healing. Large Group also went well. Thank you for praying while I couldn't be there.
Pray for our relationship with TAMU administration.
We had to ask for an exemption because TAMU says we are discriminating in leadership based on religion. Pray we're approved before we move to restricted status Sept. 1. Pray also for grace from officials for last minute requests to hold outreaches in busy places.
David, a student leader, met with the administration for an hour, explaining our organization's purpose and how we try to carry that out. At the end, they said, "Well, it sounds like you need this exemption." And although there was lots of scrambling, we were able to find places to hold our outreaches in high foot traffic areas.
Pray for CrossRoads.
Our new student retreat Sept. 9-10, where we'll study Philippians. Ask God for 15 new students, 30 total, to attend from our fellowship. Pray for Linson, our speaker, to clearly call students to faith. Pray for staff to lead excellent inductive Bible studies with small groups. And pray students decide to follow Jesus as Savior and Lord, and join in Christian community.
We had 9 new students and 10 returning members from Aggie IV, and 80 students total from A&M, Rice, and University of Houston. I had a great time leading a Small Group over a couple passages in Philippians, and our speaker was excellent. 8 AgIVers made significant decisions in their relationships with Jesus. At least 1 student at the retreat decided to start following Jesus and another wants to learn more - but neither signed their names on the evaluations. Pray we find out who these students are!

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