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.

Coming Soon

Update coming soon... the blog isn't the highest priority in my life apparently. Hopefully will update this week.

Impact Camp

 

Impact Camp Photo

Impact Camp - Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we held our key student labourers retreat at a local church in Brissy. There were four primary purposes:
1. Cast Vision for the Direction/Purpose of Student Life (in general) and specifically for this year.
2. Provide training in evangelism and follow-up calls for interested new students.
3. Create a calender of events for the year within each Focus Area [explanation of Focus Areas below]
4. Fellowship & bonding between the students and the new STINT team.

Here's everyone before a meeting.

Worship.

Trying to do a fun photo.

Leading evangelism training with Kris.

Focus Areas: Student Life is broken down into Focus Areas. A focus area is a particular grouping of academic fields which relate to each other better than others. For the past three years there have been primarily 3 focus areas: IT/Science/Law, Language/Arts/Business, Mt. Gravatt Campus {sociology}. Last year they added a new "part time" focus area called ISM, which is International Student Ministry.

This year we plan on continuing those four and adding more:
*Logan Campus - First of all, I (with the help of Nate) will be pioneering at Logan Campus for a day or two every week to launch a movement there. This has never happened before at Griffith University. Please pray for me as I look for believers at Logan who might be interested in joining Student Life and starting a Focus Area there.
*South Bank Campus - Secondly, this is another Griffith Campus that has never been pursued by a STINT team. But this year Kris & Amanda will be pioneering there to launch the first ever South Bank Focus Area. Please pray for this pursuit as well.
*Multi-Media - Kris has some unique skills in the area of video productions and has been approved to spend one day a week using his abilities to produce quality videos to help promote the UpperMidwest partnerships around the world: Australia, France, Urugauy, Ghana, East Asia, & 4th Journey (middle east location). Please pray for him as he seeks the Lord on how to best use this time. This is a vital way that the Lord uses to call many soon-to-be graduates into missions.

Oh and if you haven't heard yet, Amanda and Nate are both here. Praise the Lord!

We have a big week ahead of us. A team of 5 Americans will join us next week, Monday through Saturday to help connect with as many students as we possibly can. Next week is also Orientation Week for first year students. This is Key!

If we can reach the first years for Christ each year, ministry will be continuously propelled forward. So please pray that we would find many believing students who are looking to get involved, and that we would find non-believing students who are interested in learning about Christ.

If you are not currently receiving my monthly updates and would like to, please email me at benjamin.t.cornish@gmail.com to request them. Thanks for reading...but mostly for praying. ONE LOVE!

Australia Day

Yesterday was Australia Day (January 26). Daniel, Kris, and I hosted a BBQ for our neighbors. And just as Daniel suspected, not a single one was Australian. We asked them all to bring a dish from their home country so we could celebrate the multi-ethnic culture here. We had twelve join us, ranging in origin from central America to Africa, to central Asia to east Asia...and America and Australia. I made a very American dish - my mom's cheesy potato casserole. Very fatty, and very delicious.

Everyone who had come said they had wished for a long time that there would be a sense of community within our complex, but nothing had been organized, so they were thankful that we reached out to them. Pray that these relationships would continue to develop into strong and open relationships, and that God's love would become evident to them not just in our loving actions toward them, but in Truth that we profess to them.

In the evening we headed to the city...to Southbank. Southbank is a park on the south side of the river, just across from downtown. They have created a manmade beach for people to swim in, and have bbq pits, and even a ferris wheel. We joined thousands of others to watch the Australia Day fireworks celebration display over the river. Here are some photos from the night:

South bank beach at night overlooking the city

 

Ferris wheel at southbank

Here's the view of the city from where we watched the fireworks..

Here are some fireworks...oooooohhhhh...aaahhhhhhh.

And some more.

And here's me after...smiling...because I like fireworks, and other types of explosions (that's probably why I like watching Mythbusters). And because downtown Brisbane is gorgeous at night! As you can tell from my photo.

Well that's good for now. More to come later.