Week one of Infusion was great. Certainly a stretch for everyone who went (which ended up being only 5 of us). It truly IS learning what it's like to start a church, or in this case, a campus ministry. Everyone on the trip had different strengths to bring to the table, so we were all stretched in our own individual ways, but could all help out in our specified ways.
We did a lot of outreach- mostly on campus. We spent 3 days doing surveys right on campus- mostly right by the union, where there's a big fountain. Wednesday night at the house church Neva and I went to, they asked us what we each learned or understood better after a week of helping there. I said two things- firstly, it was such a cool thing to see how people from our church AND their church were both blessed through the experience. For everyone going for a week there, it's such an eye-opener into how hard it really is to start a church (or campus minstry). And for their church, it was/is a blessing for us to be there helping plant seeds and even water some soil of seeds that have already been planted. And secondly, one of my main goals in going was to make some contacts with people that I could follow-through with in the fall when I move there. That prayer was answered. Don't you love answered prayers? I do. God is so good.
With me moving to Lincoln in the fall, God knew exactly what He wanted to stretch me in before going there permanently. I really needed to practice presenting the gospel in a sincere and personable way. Over the course of the week, I got to share the gospel and go through the whole gospel track 4 times- great practice! All four times it was sprung from situations that were totally God.
Just to name a few, Sunday night we were doing neighborhood surveys around where Ben and Melissa's house was, and I went out with Mike, one of the guys from the church there. We were going through the neighborhood and there was a house that was surrounded by a fence. Mike goes, "Usually people that have houses with fences don't want people to come to the door. They're trying to keep people out." But God impressed on my heart that we needed to go to this house, so for whatever reason, I said ,"No, we need to stop at this house." Sooooo, we went to this house and it was a Vietnamese couple, probably in their mid-50's. They didn't know english very well, but we explained that we were doing spiritual interest surveys and they invited us in and so we went in and talked to them for over an hour. They gave us pop and were very hospitible- I had the opportunity to go through the gospel with them and invited them to church- told them about the international ministry and they were excited. Another cool example is Tuesday afternoon. We were handing out flyers all week for a discussion group we were offering that night (Tuesday) about "Jesus versus Religion". We were just about to leave campus for the day and for whatever reason (God) impressed it on my heart for us to go talk to this guy who was off eating lunch by himself. So Kirk and I headed over and went through the whole survey. The guy was a believer who had been looking for a campus group to get hooked up- he came to the discussion group that night and was excited to go to Harvest (the church in Lincoln) that following Sunday. Cool stuff.
I think anyone who went could attest that it was a week of exhaustion and being stretched in faith and trust. It was great stuff- it makes me excited for God's plans for the rest of the Lincoln Infusion teams. To God be the glory. Nobody else. O yah, and here's our 'mug shot, "do you know for certain?" picture...
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