Information Overload!!

Warning....This will probably be a pretty long post because so much has happened in the past few days and I have had no time to blog!! So either it will be really long or I will get sick of writing and you will end up reading very shortened versions of the actual stories.

Where to begin....Thursday nights are normally our "Teach and Go" night, meaning that we learn a new form of evangelism and then go out and practice.  This Thursday was a little bit different because the staff challenged us to invite friends we had made at our various work places to go out to coffee, eat, hang out, etc. to continue to build the relationship with them.  We at camp (there are 13 of us working there) thought it would be fun and less awkward to try to get a big group all together and began to kind of suggest we all hang out to see what other people thought.  However, God took care of the planning before we could even put something together when another counselor put up a sign up in the staff lounge for a staff dinner on Thursday.  How weirdly coincidental is that??  Anyway, most of us ended up going from Cru and there were probably between 30 and 35 people at the dinner.  It was really really fun and a great way to continue building friendships in a casual, intimidating way.  We didn't really try to push spiritual conversations, we wanted them to see that we are normal people, the same as them, and not on a mission to push things down their throat every time we hang out.  I think it went really well and I'm really excited to try to do the same thing again.

Saturday morning I had my personal discipleship time which normally encompasses sharing for about a half hour or so and then doing a study.  The past few times Annie and I haven't had much luck getting in good conversations, but this week we decided to go down near the beach and approached a young woman sitting alone and asked her to go through perspective cards with us.  She was totally open to it, and the conversation that followed was really exciting.  In short, she had grown up in a really tough life and was emancipated at 15.  Even though she had never actually had a religious background, gone to church, or owned a Bible, she had this complete faith in God.  She knew little about him accept that He is there, she has complete trust in him, and she felt like she could talk to him every day.  It was crazy as we went through the gospel and ideas of grace and forgiveness, because she realized that she actually was already saved.  She had prayed the sinners prayer and trusted in Jesus even though she wasn't a part of organized religion. It was a totally amazing experience just to be able to talk to her, and she was really happy about it.  She mentioned that she had been having a really hard day and needed the human interaction.  We ended up going to the bookstore and buying her her first Bible and she was so happy to have the opportunity to read it for herself :)

This past week in project has been all about UNITY in order to help us grow as a unit before the staff leave on Thursday.  On Thursday morning we had a rule that only one boy and one girl were allowed to set alarms, and then had to create a chain of people to wake each other up at certain times by actually going  into their rooms.  It was a little stressful, but everyone trusted each other and refrained from setting individual alarms.  The chain worked pretty well, although many of us admitted to sleeping very little because of worrying about not getting up for work, class, etc. on time.  We also received numerous clues that we were required to put together to figure out our activity for Saturday night, which ended up to be a staff vs. student softball game.  It was a lot of fun and included team shirts that we made for ourselves, fully decked out softball outfits, tons of cheering and random songs, and a really long game because everyone was required to bat once.  Though we started out a little competitive coming into the game, it was awesome to see the amazing attitudes that everyone had as we cheered on both our own team and the other one.  Afterwards, a few of us rewarded ourselves by going again to Menchies, the amazing frozen yogurt place.  We even took a bunch of pictures to document the night!!

Getting all ready!

G-UNIT  Y

I did actually try to bat...

Being sad cause our yogurt was gone :(

Action group!!!!

Being awesome :P

Today, was a really special Sunday at church.  There are four or five different churches that meet in the same building at various times of the day and week, (each one is different, Korean, Spanish, African American...) but today all of the churches bonded together in one big, celebratory service in which different parts were done in different languages.  It was incredible to see everyone worship together and afterwards there was a huge barbeque.  Today was also one of our big, special outreach days.  We had some of the perspective cards blown up into big boards and spread out with big and small versions in three different locations: the promenade, the street by the beach, and on the beach itself.  I was on the beach, and after a few unsuccessful attempts at approaching people in big groups with the cards we decided to split off into smaller groups.  I went with one of the guys, Matt, and we started a conversation with two guys sitting on the beach who were probably about our age.  We learned that they were both living in Hollywood for the summer doing internships; one was from NY and the other from Brazil.  Our conversation started out a little shaky but became really good as we continued, and it lasted for probably close to an hour.  The guy from Brazil declared himself to be an atheist and remained pretty strong to that idea the whole time, but the other was really open and searching to discover the truth.  It was really interesting to hear how different their answers were, and then to be asked to share our own opinions.  We went through the perspective cards and then continued to talk with them asking us and many questions as we asked them.  We had the opportunity to go through some of the narrative gospel with them, giving stories, illustrations, and even drawing in the sand to describe the concepts of sin, salvation, and grace.  The guy from NY expressed at the beginning that he wanted to believe in God and salvation, but he just really wasn't sure.  By the end, he was totally interested in pursuing the truth further for himself and we encouraged him to buy a  Bible and read the story for himself to which he said he actually might.  We ended the conversation by giving them our contact information in case they had more questions or wanted to talk again and it will be really interesting to see if we have any more contact with them throughout the summer.

I am really enjoying having three days off of work instead of just two.  It's nice to have just a bit of extra time to relax and regroup.  I will be spending tomorrow afternoon at a Cru party on the beach and I wish everyone else a Happy 4th of July!