A Great Weekend

On June 28, Janelle and myself board on jet plane with Brad and Kelsey Bullock as we head to New York City for the Leadership training of New York Gospel Outreach (NYGO). On June 30, another 48 students and leaders from NMC and NLF join us for 7 days of training, interacting, and life-changing experience as we seek to share about our relationships with Jesus in the city.

On Friday, the team met out at the Bethel College Retreat Center for an overnighter. The goal was to get to know each other a little better and do a little prep. We played on the lake, ate some burgers and dogs, played some games, sat around a campfire, shared some stories, spent some time with God, and did a little training on how to share the message of salvation.

Some of my highlights:

• As an assignment, all students and leaders have been asked to prepare two stories, a salvation story, and a growth story. We had many of the students read theirs to the group. Always awesome.
• As one of the New Life students shared his salvation story, we realized that a significant part of his story was when a gal from NMC wrote a letter telling him about Jesus Christ. She wrote it from our NYGO style trip 3 years prior, and now he is preparing to go on the same type of trip.
• Grilling burgers... cook one burger till it look a little more like a piece of coal, then watching Nick Berkey take a (crunchy) bite, and nearly gag!
• Seeing light bulbs go off in students eyes as we walked through the "bridge illustration"... a simple way of explaining how and why to enter into a relationship with Christ. The "light bulb" was, I think for most, a thought of "I can do this. I can share the Gospel with someone."
• Time around a campfire, by the lake, under the stars, sharing about times of sensing the reality of God, wrestling with God, and people or advice that has had significant Spiritual Impact.
• Determining that we must rename our "huddle groups" (the teams of 3 students, 1 leader that work together at NYGO) to "cuddle groups".

Watching students connect is always awesome. There were nearly 50 of us there with varying levels of connectedness, yet I can say we all left at 1:00 pm today feeling a closer connection through our time. It's amazing what a little intentional time together can accomplish!

Over the next week, I'm going to share a few of the student's stories that they prepared. I think you will find yourself encouraged, inspired, and challenged in much the same way I was.