WE HAD 31 STUDENTS!

We had 31 students at our meeting tonight! Did you hear that -we had 31 students at our first meeting tonight!!! We are so excited!! People started coming to our meeting at 6:30. By the time 7 came the room was almost full. We ended up bringing in chairs. AND we didn't have everyone there! Half of our returning students weren't in town yet! We have never had that many students at any Chi alpha meeting at BU!

I can't tell you how grateful we are to God for answering our prayers for growth and new students. Your prayers have made such a difference to us in these last few weeks. Thank you so much.

Please pray that next week we would have the same turn out and more. Pray that these students would enjoy being with us and decide to stay and commit themselves to Chi Alpha. The other religious groups on campus meet next week and there will be a few that will go to those groups, but pray that we retain those who came this week. We want 60 next week!

We had 31 students at our meeting tonight! Yay God!!

Great Turn Out for Splash

We have had two days of 90+ degrees! But what great days we have had! Splash was almost a record breaking day for us. We got 75 contacts with students yesterday. The most we have ever had was 80, about 4 years ago. From 2-5 we stood in the hot sun (I almost fainted at one point), and we had so much fun.

Today we had an information table in Marsh Plaza and we met another ten students and we were visible to many more. We divided up the names of all the students and we will all be spending the next 24 hours contacting everyone we met in the last two days.

Tomorrow night is our first meeting of the year and we think we are going to have a big turn out. I would be ecstatic if 40 people showed up! With all our contacts that is possible!

Thanks for all your prayers. Please continue to pray as our week goes on. We are all very excited.

Fourth to Fifth

Yup, the clutch is in and I am shifting from fourth to fifth today! We just finished the posters and printing for the Chi Alpha table at Splash on Sunday. Our information cards just came in the mail today and we received our t-shirts this week for everyone to wear. We started hearing from students who have been arriving back in Boston in the past two days and everyone is excited to be back.

Tomorrow we will meet with returning students to say hi and brief them on the coming week. Splash starts at 2pm Sunday afternoon. Gene is spending the day updating our website and creating some handouts on how to survive BU in your freshman year to hand out at Splash.

Please check out my last post and pray for our calendar of events for this next week. We want to meet new students who will connect with us and stay. Especially pray for sophomore students returning who met us last year but never got involved. I hope they are feeling the need to put God back in their lives this year.

I will try to blog from Splash or one of our events this week while it is happening. Thanks for your prayers.

Gearing Up

I think we are in third gear now. Come next Friday we will be in fifth gear and overdrive, and cruising along at a fast pace. We had our Intern Day today with Robert and we introduced him to the coming year and we prayed for sometime about the coming few weeks ahead. On Monday we will have our first staff meeting with all of us together.

Here is our first week schedule. Pleased pray that we would meet many freshman, especially preChristians and that they would all join our group.

August 28 - First meeting with returning students
August 29 - Splash activities fair with freshman
August 30 - Info table in Marsh Plaza
August 31 - First Chi Alpha meeting
September 1 - Museum of Fine Arts with the students
September 2 - Religious Life Fair and evening dessert
September 3 - Harvard Square Restaurant tour
September 4 - Freedom Trail and dinner at Quincy Market

We were able to print our postcards and order t-shirts for Splash. Please continue to pray for God's provision for our events and outreach. It looks like God will be providing event by event. It's not the way we like doing things - it's veery distracting - but we are flexible and grateful.

A New Year

My personal calendar is all off. Most people see the new year starting in January. But as a campus pastor the new year is always September. New students, new opportunities, new friends, a flurry of activities and a new Chi Alpha group. There are returning students, but when the new students join us this fall the group will be different in many ways.

I love September. And when I find myself in the summer looking forward to September it means I have rested and refreshed myself, and I am ready to start the new school year. I am ready.

Gene and I have had an interesting summer and it continues to be challenging. Our car is parked in our driveway and will not be moving anymore. We have survived with food to eat, a roof over our head and utilities. And our preparation for the coming year has been fruitful. Money for our events on campus is coming in, but continues to be a challenge. Thomas and Robert have been hard at work raising their budgets, and although its been hard they are doing well. (Thomas is at 70% and Robert is at 30%).

I am just finishing up a new believers bible study. All the time I have been writing this series I have been praying that we will be able to use it with new converts this fall. I met with two new freshman this summer as they visited for orientation and I am praying that they will both make the decision to be part of Chi Alpha this fall.

Gene has been working hard on learning the programming for building apps for the iPhone and the iPad. He is developing an online magazine for college students which will be a great way to train and give us visibility. We'll let you know when it is ready. He's also been working on this years Tuesday night teachings and our core facilitator handbook.

We will be contacting our returning students this week sharing our fall calendar and getting them excited to be back in Boston in September. Usually they all can't wait to get back.

I decided to start my blog early because things are happening and we can always use your prayers. Thank you for your prayers this summer. Please pray for our start up in September. Next time I will post our calendar so that you can pray for each event. We will be setting the dates tomorrow at our staff meeting. Talk to you then.