1/4th of the Year is Done

Well it's been about 2 months since I last wrote...whoops. Ministry is a high priority than updating my online blog. But I shall give you an update now.

The last major event I wrote about was Impact Camp and the start of the year. We're now half way done with the first semester. Here are the highlights of what we've seen God do:

Launched Student Life at Logan Campus: We have 2 men that are interested in Student Life, one of them I have been meeting with regularly each week and he went on the Men's Camping trip last week. His name is Taaremon. He is from the Kirirbati Islands (approximately where the International Date Line & the Equator meet). There are now close to 15 women involved with the weekly women's bible study at Logan. [The campus is about 90% female, so the women's ministry there will obviously be a bit more effective than the men's.]

Launched Student Life at South Bank Campus: We actually just had our first bible study at South Bank yesterday. Kris and Amanda are leading this study. They were expecting 2 students to show up, but 6 came. Later Kris received an email from someone who heard about the study and wants to come next week. So praise the Lord! He is at work in all 4 campuses at Griffith Uni in Brisbane.

New believers: We have seen 4 people trust in Christ so far this year. Three of them are Aussie women, one is a Chinese guy. The first gal that prayed to receive Christ has now become nearly impossible to contact. She doesn't seem to want to do follow up, so we're not sure what is going on with her. Please pray that if she did truly trust in the Lord, the Spirit would stir in her a desire to learn more and get connected with other believers. Also please pray for the other three as we seek to help them grow as new believers.

ConneXions Conference: We held the Queensland Regional Conference at Mt. Tambourine at the end of March. I was asked to give the first message, which was on living a Spirit-filled life. The students really seemed to enjoy this. One student, with tears in her eyes, called me her sign-post to the Lord. What a compliment, and proof that God works even through sinners, like me. Another student said that the Lord revealed to him a whole new understanding of what Christian living means. He said he now realizes how to stop living as a Pharisee, and to start living by the Spirit.   Also at the conference, my team organized the conference game, which was meant to help students get to know each other from across campuses, as well as to convey the theme for the weekend, which was SENT.

The game is pretty complex to explain, but the underlining jist was that students were broken down into groups that represented states in Australia or other countries. In those locations they would get to meet other students while playing some sort of game (like Telephone Pictionary, cards, or Giant Jenga).  However, there was another group called LOTW (Light of the World), whose job was not to play games, but to go out into the various states/countries and ask people if they would like to play another game, a game of dice. (Dice represented the Truth). If the student played and won, the LOTW student would tell them, "You win. You've just entered the real game, the game of life. Follow me and i'll explain more." Then their job was to take that student to "follow up" where they would learn that winning dice meant they had just trusted in Christ, and then would learn how to share the Real Game with others who didn't know. The game went really well. Afterward we had a debrief and students shared how they saw parallels between the game and real life. It was easy to see the parallel between the game and real life, that most people don't even know there is a real purpose to life; instead they are just so caught up in their own worldly things (like playing cards in the game) that they may not even care that something greater exists.

We also had training for students at the conference and everyone seemed to have positive feedback. My training was actually for students who came as "seekers". Meaning that they had some questions about Christianity and weren't necessarily convinced yet. So we talked about the gospel and what Christianity is all about. The next day we talked about worldviews/apologetics/total truth. I also received great feedback from the students who attended this time as well.

Last week the students had a week break from classes, so we too had our vacation time. It was a great week to relax in the midst of a very busy ministry. And I've just been reminded that of all the STINT teams across the world, we STINTers in Australia do about twice as much ministry as everyone else because we don't have language classes filling up the first half of each weekday. So often times the missionaries elsewhere feel like they can't get enough ministry done, and down here we often seem to be drowning in it.

But God is good & his love endures forever. Praise Him for all He is doing here. Thanks for your prayers & support. It has not gone unnoticed. Not by me, and not by the Lord. May his praise be on my lips forever and ever.