God is so cool...

I wanted to let you all in on a bit of what is going on here in the lives of our students. First off let me just tell you how cool God is, when we decided to switch to New Mexico for the trip rather than Mexico, I was bummed and a little bit frustrated. Then I signed up to fill 22 spots for this trip, I knew we were going to hit that mark when we had 5 students show up to our informational meeting. Again, a little bummed and frustrated. I kept thinking to myself that we weren't going where God wanted us to go because nothing was going as planned. We had people drop out with a few weeks left, we had a last minute addition a week and a half ago and our final total was 12, last year we had over 25... It wasn't until a few days before we left that God showed me how incredibly wrong I was about the whole thing. God knew where we would be going and the affect He was going to have on these students hearts when we got to the booming metropolis of Glorieta, NM. Every one of these students is here for a reason, every person who isn't here isn't here for a reason. God has been all over this from the beginning, so let me share some cool God sightings with you...

Katrina told me how she was playing tag with some little kids and one of them was hit too hard and started crying, it was clearly an accident and no big deal so Katrina pulled him aside, nurtured him a bit and began to explain to him that accidents happen, that the other child didn't mean it and so on and so forth. The kid looked up at her and said, "accidents do happen, like me... I was an accident." Katrina's heart broke, when she was telling the story you could tell she was getting emotional. She told the little boy the he is not an accident, that he has been put on this earth for a reason, that he has a purpose. Even my eyes welled up a bit with that.

Marisa had a conversation with a man who had a hard heart in a nursing home and after praying for him opened her eyes to the man sobbing. His heart had been softened by the love of Christ showed by Marisa and her team and he was like a different man after that.

Jeremy had a conversation with a man who is 101 years old for a solid 45 minutes, talking with him about everything under the sun and being there just to show him that Jeremy loves him and so does Christ.

There have been so many cool stories like that that I will let your students share with you later on but it has been a trip that is saturated with the spirit of the Lord. God is showing up in the lives of your students in a huge way and you should be proud of all of them in the way they have stepped up to the plate. Pray for a fruitful next two days for us, for rest, effectiveness, and for God to be the focal point for all of us. Bless God everyone.