So much to do, so little time!

*Disclaimer: This was a draft I started this past Sunday but didn't have time to finish, so instead of starting afresh with a new, current post, I'll finish this one before I write another post that's more to-date.*

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It's amazing that the final full week of project has come to a close. Wednesday the campus track family will all go our separate ways to our different REAL homes...South Carolina, North Carolina, California, Missouri, Illinois, Florida, Kentucky...

Needless to say, the faster the end of Summer Project approaches, the more packed our schedules have become as the intense desire to make the most of every moment increases.

Because last week was our last week of ministry on campus, the staff strongly encouraged all of our ministry teams to focus on a specific vision for ministry on our campuses, and to take active steps to further that vision before we left those campuses in the hands of future believers to reap the harvest of what the Lord has sown through us. Our particular vision for our home campus, City College, was to that a visual community of Christian students would rise up on the campus. It's been amazing how different student life is on the campuses we've visited in NYC compared to those in the South...in most cases, student life as we know it at say, USC, doesn't exist up here. This is largely due to most of the colleges being commuter schools so ninety percent of the students just come to take their classes and then leave to go home. So if student life in general is lacking, Christian community is definitely lacking. Although we knew we would not be able to see a Christian community all of a sudden pop up at City College in the short time we were there, we knew we could do some sowing that could open the door to that happening in the future. Just a few good Christian contacts would be all that's needed to get a movement started. Tuesday we approached students with a bag of candy and asked if they would have time to do a 30-second survey with us, which looked something like this:

1) Do you believe you have found your purpose in life? (Circle yes or no)
2) What do you believe determines how you find a sense of purpose in your life? (Circle one: self, family, God, other)
3) Would you be interested in attending a discussion with other college students to learn about Jesus?
4) Name: _____________
Number: ___________
5) Can we text you at this number or contact you on Facebook? (Circle yes or no)

We were able to cover a lot of ground with these surveys as far as getting a list of students who said they wanted to learn about Jesus. We then invited those who said that they'd be interested and gave us permission to contact them to a "focus group" we planned for Thursday. The idea of a focus group is to ask the students a series of questions about life, relationships, and spirituality--questions such as, "What would you characterize as a wasted life?"--without giving our own answers to the questions. The point was to let the students be heard without pushing our own views on them. There goes a lot to be said for making people feel respected and not looked down upon--something the stereotypical Christianity has frankly done a poor job of communicating to non-believers. We would let the students know at the beginning of the discussion that we were only going to ask for an hour of their time, but for those who would be interested in hearing our views, we'd be happy to talk to them after the focus group.

So that was the plan. We were thrown a curveball, though, when only two people responded to our texted invitation, and both of those said they were busy during the planned time for the discussion. Thursday came, we met on the grassy area on campus we described in the invitation with a box of cookies from a local bakery, and waited. After a while a guy named Allen showed up. We initially all felt a little awkward since he saw he was the only one there, but he turned out to be really friendly and easy to talk to, and so we spent the focus group hour chatting with Allen about the city, his background, and got a little into the spiritual side of things towards the end of the conversation. The discussion certainly didn't go as we'd planned, but we were able to have a nice laidback conversation with Allen. We were able to share with him some of our beliefs, but we didn't force a deep spiritual conversation, which I believe the Lord will bless in that we we were clear with him about what we believed but were able to show him that we cared about being his friend, not just getting a conversion.

And now for the highlight of the week for me: Monday we were able to lead a student to Christ! We got a later start that day because our morning meeting ran long because of a training session on how to talk to Jewish students, so once we got to campus we were all feeling discouraged because we only had a little over an hour to be there. However, as we gathered to pray over our time there before we split off in pairs, one of our staff members, Stephanie, optimistically shared that she really felt like the Lord would love to show off for us that day and teach us how limitless He is, despite our time limit. When we all split off, Stephanie and I went together and approached a girl to ask if she'd be interested in doing a picture survey with us. This picture survey, by the way, is a ministry tool Crusade uses called "Soularium," a project some arts students did that involves asking people to answer questions about their life and view of God based on an assortment of random, artsy photographs. She agreed, taking her ipod earphones out, and we introduced ourselves and she introduced herself as, we'll call her, Sylvia. As our conversation progressed, we learned Sylvia is originally from the Dominican Republic and has been living in NYC for about 9 years. I was especially struck by how friendly and open she was with us. While we went through the Soularium questions with Sylvia, she gave very well-thought-out answers. She shared with us that she believed it was possible to have a personal relationship with God, and even felt a kind of connection with him; but when we asked her what she thought about Jesus and who He was, she wasn't able to give us an answer. It was like she hadn't given him any thought before. We told her we believed that Jesus is God, and then took that opportunity to ask Sylvia if we could tell her a little bit about what we believed. We shared the Gospel with her, and it was so beautiful to see the gradual light come across Sylvia's countenance as we saw she understood what we were saying and responded when we asked her if yielding her life to Jesus was the desire of her heart with, "Yes! Definitely!" We prayed with her to welcome Christ into her life right there at a table under a tree of City College's lovely campus. It was so sweet to hug Sylvia afterwards and celebrate that we had a new sister in Christ! More good news: there's a ministry that's a part of Campus Crusade at City College that focuses on Latinamerican students (Sylvia is Dominican) called Destino, and Sylvia was enthusiastic about becoming involved when we told her about it.

Also, Thursday, our last day on campus, two of the people on our ministry team, my friends Julian and Ali, were able to lead a student named Charles to Christ! I can't tell you exactly how that conversation went, but what an encouragement that we started AND ended the week with seeing someone accept Jesus as their Savior for the first time. Even though the focus group didn't reach our standards of success, the Lord blessed our last week of ministry in the best way possible--we have two new members of God's family to look forward to seeing in heaven!