First Back Court Cafe off 2010

I am sitting at the door of our Back Court Cafe welcoming students in. We started at 7:00 pm and we have already had close to 50 people through the door. That's really good for the first hour.

It was a rainy day on campus today but we passed out around 700 flyers and the evening seems very active on campus. There are many students on the streets and in the student union. We have had many drop ins and I am so excited at how many of our new students are here.

Just met Pete and Chris, two drop ins who are having a great time. Robert has had a hour long conversation with a Muslim visitor and there is a big game of Uno going on towards the front of the room.

God is good. Thanks for all your prayers.

I Am Jazzed!

I don't know if I have enough room to tell you everything that has been happening this last week. God has been blessing us. Between our first two Tuesday night gatherings we had 53 new students attend! Chi Alpha has never had that kind of response in this city on a single campus. We are following up on 70 female contacts, and the men's first core meeting had 11 !!!! guys there!!!

We are all incredulous and excited!! Forget about being tired, I am jazzed!

And I get to lead a women's freshmen core. (We will have two women's cores this year. Both will be full.) We had our first meeting on Sunday and I had 6 women attend, with about 5 more thinking about coming. I am very excited to be working with freshmen. These women will be our future leaders. In fact, the major women leaders we have had in the past two years all attended my freshmen core three years ago.

This Friday is our Back Court Cafe and we expect a record turn out. We will be passing out flyers on campus tomorrow. Pray that we would have many new students come and that the new students that are already part of our group would have a good time getting to know each other.

Thanks for your prayers. They are making a difference.

A Fantastic Week

It is Sunday night and a fantastic week is about to end. We had 33 students at our first meeting on Tuesday, 30 at our dessert on Thursday and we had over 75 face to face contacts for the whole week at all our activities. Your prayers have made a difference. Gene and I are still amazed and incredulous over the number of students we have met this week.

This next week we will have an information table in Marsh Plaza all day before our meeting. We expect as many and probably a few more students than last week to attend on Tuesday night. I have already made arrangements to have a couple of new students to play on the worship team with me and an old Chi Alpha alumni has offered to play bass for us.

I think that we may have enough women who want to be in small groups to have three women's groups. That would mean I would have to lead a group. Wow, that's a great problem to have! I hope I get a group of all freshmen!

I am looking forward to this next week. We will take Sunday and Monday off and then back into the adventure. Please continue to pray.

Free Dessert

I am sitting in the basement cafeteria of the Theology building watching our Chi Alpha leaders interact and converse with new students and visitors at our Free Dessert after the first day of classes. I am so proud of our returning students. They have really come so far. We used to have to remind them to introduce themselves to visitors and reach out to others. Now we can't stop them.

Our dessert tonight has been fantastic. We had 29 total come. Half of those students were brand new to us. Our attendance has been so encouraging.

Please pray that these students would choose to be part of Chi Alpha. Many of the students who came to our meeting on Tuesday are also looking at other Cbristian groups on campus. We don't compete, but I meet so many students that I would love to spend time with who choose to go to Real Life or Intervarsity.

Thanks fro your prYers. God is really answering them.