Updatedness

Well, I hadn't planned on there being a gap this large between my updates. It seems that I just keep getting busier and busier as the weeks go on. Project has really begun to ramp up: the staff are leaving today, which means the students are taking over their jobs as student leaders.

I was given a job on the operations team. What we do is take care of all the nuts and bolts of the project. We are responsible for writing checks for project expenses, distributing CTA passes and other things, searching for job leads and preparing team folders for next year, and many other things. I received the responsibility of processing reimbursements and support checks. This means that, if any student receives a support check in the mail, I have to record the value in their account, mail the checks to headquarters, and then handle reimbursement paperwork. It's a pretty cool responsibility and I'm excited for it. I also get to be "Printer Captain", which means I keep watch over the project's printers. If people need to print something, they come to me.

Besides transitioning to my student role, this week also marked the first week that I spent entirely on campus. I decided against continuing the job search since I had no leads and there would be no worth in hiring me for 5 weeks. So I spent Tuesday through Thursday on campus sharing the Gospel with students.

Tuesday I went out with my friend Josh to the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC). The campus is very convenient to do ministry on, since it sits directly across the highway from our apartments. You really just have to walk across a bridge and you're there.

During our time on campus, Josh and I got to share with four guys. We used this tool called Solarium that uses pictures to help people explore their thoughts on life and spirituality. The first guy we talked to was Muslim student from Saudi Arabia. We went through Solarium with him and talked about the pictures he chose. One of the pictures he chose struck me. It was of a locked door and a person peering through a window in the door. He said that he felt like he could not get close to God. Regrettably, I didn't address how Christ brings us into a relationship with God, since I didn't know how he would respond as a Muslim, but Josh and I invited him to English Club, a club project students started to help internationals with speaking English. Hopefully he comes and we can talk more.

After that, we talked briefly to a guy name Hieu who said he was a Catholic but was not really in the faith now because he was busy with school. We shared Solarium with him and went over the points of the gospel with him, just as a reminder. Maybe God will work in his heart to bring him back in the fold.

The last guy we talked to on Tuesday was a guy named Scott. He said he was agnostic, that if there was a God then He didn't interact with the world. From there, we got into an hour-long conversation on different aspects of creation versus evolution, how we know God exists, the complexity of the world and the universe, human behavior, and a bunch of other things. It was really cool and not at all argumentative. We basically just exchanged our opinions on different things. Josh and I did get to share the gospel, just to tell him what we believed. At the end, we exchanged contact info and book recommendations, so we might get back together sometime and talk again.

God continued to work through my friends and I on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wed. I and my friends got to talk to a couple international students, one from Poland and one from South Korea, about their backgrounds and experiences with the gospel. Then we went to another campus and had a volleyball outreach where we set up a game of volleyball and then anyone could come. It was really fun and we got to engage with several students who stopped by to play with us.

Thursday was also encouraging. I went out to lunch with my discipler Steve Ng and my friend Caleb Eno. We went to this burger place called Jim's, which has really good burgers for really cheap. It was fun to hang out with Steve on more time, since he's leaving with the staff today. I have been so blessed by Steve's guidance and friendship over the past five weeks and I'm sad to see him go.

After Caleb and I ate with Steve, we headed to UIC again to spread the word. We talked to two guys, both who were from a Catholic background. The first guy, Ed, said he was still practicing and that he believed in Christ. We invited him to our weekly meetings. The other guy we talked to, Ken, was raised Catholic, then became Buddhist, and now wasn't really anything. Caleb and I were able to share our testimonies and why we believed in God, so that he could hear the truth and what we believed. We invited him to our meetings too. Hopefully he comes.

So that's what God has been doing this week. Sharing has definitely been a stretching experience for me, but God has been giving me more of a heart for evangelism. And over the next five weeks, He has plenty of time to work through me to reach these students.