Return to Columbus

It's finally that time again: I'm going back to Ohio State. It feels like forever and a day since I last stepped foot on campus for a class. The last time I was at school was June 8th, over three and a half months ago, which feels like forever when all your friends are back in school already. At least next year we'll be on semesters like everyone else, but for this year I'll have to deal with one final dose of quarters, meaning I go back later and get out later, not a very fun situation.

But still, this year is bringing with it a lot of excitement. On Friday, I'm moving in to my new house (new in the sense that I have never lived there before. It's not in the best of shape) where I'll be living with nine other guys. All of us are in Cru, so it will be fun to live with other Christian brothers for a change. Our house is called the Bruderhof, which either stands for brotherhood or house of brothers, I'm not sure, but I'm looking forward to creating a lasting brotherhood between all my housemates. It's definitely going to be a cool experience and I look forward to what God will do in our house this year.

Other excitement comes in the form of new responsibilities on campus. I am deeply involved with the Campus Crusade (Cru) movement on campus and this year I've been given the opportunity to act as head tech guy for the weekly Cru meetings. I almost stumbled into the job by accident. I was in Indianapolis for Christmas Conference and got to talking with an OSU Cru staffer about how I used to do tech for my high school youth group. As it happened, the guy who ran tech was a senior who was graduating so the staffer introduced me to him and the rest of the crew and everything went from there. I got training for most of Spring quarter and now this year I'll be heading up the Cru crew. I'm really excited because I love technology and making sure things run smoothly for meetings, so this year is going to be fun.

I'm also planning on leading my Bible study with one of my buddies this year. We lost a couple of our leaders to graduation, so I felt like this was an opportunity to step up and live out the gospel more by leading underclassmen and freshmen to Christ. I want to make an impact on my university before I graduate and this will be an awesome way to maybe change a few lives or the whole campus for Christ. It will be interesting, as I've never lead a bible study full time before, but if God really wants me to do this, He'll give me the words to say.

Classes will be different as well, since I'm out of the freshmen sequence finally. I'm excited to try new and different subjects and to get a taste for what being an ECE major is like. Hopefully things won't be too terribly difficult, but as an engineer, there's not that much hope on that front. I just pray that I end up enjoying what I'm doing because I don't know what else I would do. Maybe become an orthodontist like my dad. (He says he doesn't care if I do or not, but I know he wants me to ;-P)

Other than that, I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends again, especially the ones I made during my time in Chicago. I feel like I'm building a bigger, more solid group of friends and I'm hoping to build that group even more. Chicago taught me a lot about socializing, something I am desperately poor at doing, so I feel more confident around different types of people. This year is going to be exciting!

Home Again, Home Again

Well, I'm back, both on the blog and back at my home in beautiful Lebanon, Ohio. I sincerely apologize for keeping everyone out of the loop for the past 3 1/2 weeks. 'Twas a busy time on Chicago Summer Project and I was experiencing life to the fullest with all of my fellow project students. And oh, what a life that was! So many things happened after I last blogged. The "Five-Dollar Prom" was just the beginning.

But first, an update on our ministry. As project began to wind down and more and more students finished up their time working at real jobs, we began to spend more and more time on campus and around the city, sharing the gospel and engaging people in conversation about what they believed. We were able to do several outreaches, as well. Twice groups went throughout downtown handing out sandwiches to the homeless on the streets. Several students shared stories of how grateful people were for simply being blessed with a sandwich. It was awesome that our group could be a blessing to those in need.

On UIC's campus, we did a poster/prayer outreach for finals week. We created posters with different thought-provoking questions like "What burdens you?", "Who/What inspires you?", and of course "How can we pray for you?". People were able to come up and write down their thoughts and we would talk to them about what they wrote. It gave us an interesting avenue to present the gospel and it worked pretty well.

I don't have exact statistics for our outreach from the entire summer, but I heard at one point a few weeks ago that we had initiated over 150 conversations with students on campus, presented the gospel 60-some times, and presented the "Spirit-filled Life" (a message to believers on living a life filled with the Holy Spirit) over 50 times. So the students of Chicago have definitely been seeded with the Gospel.

Besides blessing our ministry in the city, God also blessed me with a great many opportunities to explore the city and experience Chicago at it's best. That experience included going to see a Cubs game at Wrigley Field when the Reds were in town. About 15 of us went, and while it was not as enjoyable to see the Reds get hammered into the ground, it was fun to go out as a group and see a classic part of the Chicago experience.

My favorite experience by far was going to see Coldplay at Lollapalooza. I, two of my roommates, and another guy from OSU trekked out at 8:00 in the morning so that we would be first in line at the gates, which didn't open until 11:00am. So we sat and waited, while the line grew behind us. When the gates did open, we raced to the stage where Coldplay was going to play at 8:30 that night and promptly took up residence in THE VERY FRONT ROW. More and more people came as the day wore on and eventually we were wedged so close that we couldn't sit down or even hope to get out. It didn't help that it was sweltering and we were woefully short on water. We also suffered through five other bands blasting out music right into our ears before Coldplay came on stage. But when they appeared, it was so worth it. They played hit after blessed hit, serenading our ears with beautiful waves of sound. And the new stuff they played was phenomenal, only increasing my enthusiasm for the new album, which comes out October 24th, btw. And when it was over and the crowds dispersed out into the city, I couldn't help but feel like I had just been in heaven.

After the concert, the only big event left was the Final Banquet. Think prom for Christian college students and you'll get a good picture of what it was like. Everyone on project got dressed up and looking all fly and flossy. Then we headed out to the banquet venue, a cozy loft-type building on the outskirts of town. We had awesome food catered by a french restaurant that I can't recall the name of; the staff project directors made a cameo with words of encouragement and advice; there was another dance party, though it was shorter than that first one; we had a project slideshow, with superlatives for everyone; and we ended with an acoustic worship set. It was a great cap to a wonderful summer, and reinforced the great community that we had built in just ten short weeks. And now we can take that back to our campuses and grow our movements all across the country.

I am so glad that I was able to go on this trip. God definitely used these ten weeks to change me, both spiritually and personally. He taught me to trust in Him through the good and the bad, that the Christian walk is not always easy and is often very difficult, and that if I trust in Him through everything, it will all work out for my good in the end. He also taught me that it is okay to be social, that girls can be my friends too, and that I need my brothers in Christ dearly. I have been blessed with a great number of new friends, especially at OSU, and through all I've learned and experienced this summer, I feel more prepared to take on a new school year and to grow in the Lord.

Thank you so much for all your support. I would not have been able to do this without your help.

Thanks, and much love,
Brad Girdwood

Back to Normal

Another week. Another update.

Well, it seems I'm back in my 7-or-so-day cycle of posting updates. I hope the past week has been kind to all of you and that God has been teaching you more about him and his character.

Thursday was another meeting day, so not a whole lot to address there. The projector has been nice to me the past few weeks, I think because it felt bad for all the trouble it's given me, and has worked like a champ. The student leadership has been doing a great job organizing the meetings, too; it hardly feels like the staff is gone at all. We've also been seeing a lot of students from campuses coming to the meetings, which is encouraging.

This weekend was an awesome community-building experience for me. I've been getting to know people better and better on the project and we are all coming together as a group. Friday I went out with a group of guys to play basketball in a park near where we live. That was an awesome community time, and good exercise, too! Friday night I had dinner with some of the OSU girls and then we watched "Country Strong" and laughed at how confusing and terrible it was.

Saturday I went to Goodwill with a group so that we could get outfits for our "Five Dollar Prom" on Sunday. We were such kids in a candy store as we mixed and matched superbly absurd outfits. It was a really fun and goofy time. I ended up going as a bro, with a crazy patterned shirt and tacky pants.

On Sunday, we had a progressive dinner, which was basically the girls making the guys dinner as appreciation for all our appreciation to them. We split up into groups of eight guys and then traveled around to different rooms for different courses. First there were appetizers. Our girls made us buffalo chicken nuggets and nachos with sausage cheese dip. It was so good it ended up filling us up pretty good. For the main course we had stir-fry, also tasty and wonderful, though I think only one of us finished a bowl because we were so full. By the time we got to dessert, I didn't know if we could eat anymore, but since the dessert was Oreo cheesecake and sugar cookies, I had to try some. It was so worth it.

The icing on this awesome cake of community was the dance party Sunday night. We set up a computer with tunes in the meeting room and then partied like it was Twenty-Eleven. It was a hot, crazy time - I was sweating buckets by the end - but so fun, and yes, I did break it down several times myself. I think we all enjoyed just being able to go nuts and have a good time after the past seven weeks.

We are definitely getting closer as a group, and in these last three weeks we have here I think God will continue to build us up as a group. If there's one thing that God has taught me in the past week, it's that community is so very important. Don't neglect community.

Trials

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
- 1 Peter 1:6-7

I will admit that the past few days have seen all kinds of trials shoved my way. From disappointed hopes to juvenile arguments to tense moments of uncertainty and even to anger and frustration toward my brothers, the past few days have been a whirlwind of emotion, and I can say that I easily eclipsed in a couple days my amount of tears shed from the first half of the year. Satan has been attacking me full force, dragging me away from my brothers and my God, trying to convince me that he is right and not God. But I think all of this has been serving to teach me a lesson of dependence on God and Christ's salvation.

One of the guys on project made a comment last night that took me aback. He said that regardless of whether we got hurt or injured, exiled or ostracized, if anything bad happened to us, as long as it brought us closer to Christ and into a better understanding of him, then it was all worth it in the end. At the time, that really bothered me, mostly because brothers had really been hurt (albeit unintentionally) in the name of community building. It seemed ridiculous to me that someone getting hurt could result in anything good.

But after thinking about it for awhile, and listening to a sermon on trials by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, I have actually come to believe that that is the right attitude. Bad things come into our lives not to harm us but to bring us closer to God and Christ. As Peter says in his first letter, trials work to strengthen and perfect our faith, to prove that it is genuine. If we stick with God through the hard times, He will build us up and continue to shape us into the sons and daughters that He wants us to be. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." - Romans 8:28. God works in ALL things, good or bad. He never guarantees our lives will be good, so we should not expect things to go well all the time, but we should take heart in the trials because God is working in us.

In fact, we should rejoice in our trials, because God is trying to improve us. I, being a perfectionist, am always trying to make myself better, but inevitably I fail in my efforts. So the thought that God Himself is trying to make me into a better person is actually kind of exciting. That he cares enough about me to want me to be a better person is humbling and astounding. And we must also remember that we have the greatest gift that has ever been given: Jesus Christ! How we do not rejoice in that always, I do not know, but whenever we face hard times, we should hold on to the fact that, no matter what the world throws at us, we still have Jesus, and when this brief span of eternity called life is over, we will be taken up to heaven to spend eternity with the Creator of the Universe, our Savior and our God.

I hope that you all take heart in this truth, and remember that we have Jesus and that, through trials, God is trying to bring us into a better understanding of Him and His love.

A Very Creative Date

Ok, for the non-Cru people (aka non-Campus Crusade folk (aka anyone over 23 who's not on Crusade Staff)), Creatives Dates are when a group of guys - in this case, our guys' Action Group - takes out a group of girls - our partner girls' Action Group - on a group date to show them how much we appreciate them and to let them have a good time. It's also a way for us to get to know our sisters in Christ better and become closer as a project. Being such outstanding gentlemen as we are - and partially because we were late in hatching our plan - we shot for the moon. This is what we did.

First off, we headed to Little Italy, which is just south of our apartments, for appetizers. Along the way, each gentlemen - excluding the navigator, because we have more guys than girls - paired up with a girl to chat and ask questions and get to know each other. We each had a silly question that we had to ask the girl we were with and then, when we reached our destination, we shared their answer with the rest of the group. It was definitely fun getting to talk to all the girls in our group and learn little tidbits about each of them.

For appetizers, we went to Chez Joel, a French restaurant for some reason situated in Little Italy. My good friend Joel Bosque actually picked out the restaurant, which I think is entirely appropriate because it's named after him. At the restaurant, we had a very intriguing salad consisting of greens wrapped in a cabbage leaf. It was covered in a vinaigrette and garnished with dates and what appeared to be a petal of a flower. The salad was pretty good, but I made the mistake of trying to eat the flower thing. It ended up being super bitter and nasty. I had to drink a lot of water to get rid of that taste.

The Salad of Mysterious Green Plants

(From Left to Right) Kristen Jolly, Josh Silliman, and Ben Jenkins

Joel Bosque (who almost always looks at the camera) and Sarah Cline (who makes weird faces)

After appetizers, we traveled to Millennium Park in downtown for a picnic dinner. We spread out on a grassy area near Buckingham Fountain, one of the largest fountains in the world, and ate a dinner of sandwiches, chips, vegetables, and pickles, with drinks of course. The coolest thing about dinner was that right when we got to the park, music started playing over the loudspeakers around the fountain, so we were treated to a nice background of classical and patriotic music while we enjoyed each others company.

Kristen, Allie Black (idk what that face is), and Shayla Mays enjoying the picnic

Adam and Sarah in deep conversation, while Kristen looks on

Ben doesn't know what's up

Caleb Eno being picturesque and Alyssa Sander

Josh Silliman intensely looks up directions on the iPhone

Our next stop was Greek Town for dessert. We went to a nice little bakery and cafe called Artopolis and had a fantastic cake, picked out by Josh Silliman, a fellow Buckeye. It was Chocolate Raspberry Truffle and was so incredibly rich and so, so good. The pieces they gave us were huge, but I made it a goal to eat my entire piece, mostly because it was so enjoyable but also because I wanted to man up and finish all my food. I think the sugar made us all crazy because all the people at my table started laughing at everything, and we had a mini-dance party at one point. I think this was probably my favorite part of the date.

We sat in the balcony at Artopolis

The amazing Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cake that we had for dessert

Proof that we were in fact at Artopolis

"The other table", not as cool as our table

For the finale, we headed to Navy Pier to watch the fireworks, or at least part of them. We got a little bit behind, so we arrived at the finale. We decided to chill there anyways and sat at a large table and chatted as a group about sundry things. Everyone agreed that it was a very awesome and fun time. I would say that tonight was the absolute best night I've had on project so far. I doubt anything will top it.

I want to thank Allie Black, Shayla Mays, Kristen Jolly, Sarah Cline, Alyssa Sander, Adam Reneker, Josh Silliman, Dan Seguin, Joel Bosque, Caleb Eno, and Ben Jenkins for such an amazing evening. You guys and gals are the best!

Another Week, Another Update

Heeeeeeeeeeeeere's Bradley!

Yes I am still alive and still in Chicago. Project is now hitting full swing, as the staff are gone and the students have taken over. As a result, my busyness levels have risen. I am now handling support and reimbursements for all the students here, as I mentioned last week, which requires me to scan and fill out a bunch of paperwork to send to the financial people of Campus Crusade for Christ. It's exactly as exciting as it sounds, but the job is essential and I'm glad that it fell to me to get it done. It's nice to be needed.

I'm also doing tech for pretty much everything here, which is fun, if stressful. I get to set up and tear down all the equipment, run slides and videos and music, and generally be the go-to guy for tech needs. It's awesome to get to do something I enjoy so much. And people are genuinely grateful for what I do, which is a new experience for me. I'm not used to getting so many thanks for simply being who I am. It feels good, and I thank God to be able to work with such awesome students.

God continues to work on the campuses we are reaching with the Gospel. International students continue to come to English Club and the International Bible Study that we started on UIC's campus. A group of project students also started a volleyball outreach on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, which has seen many of the IIT students participate. And a lot of students have been coming to our Thursday night "Chi-Time" meetings. God is definitely moving in Chicago. Please continue to pray that hearts would be opened and turned to Christ.

I think this last week was most beneficial in helping me get to know more of the students here on project. Sunday afternoon we had a human scavenger hunt, where we set out in groups to search for members of the Community Team dressed up in disguise. My group and I ran all over the area around Michigan Avenue chasing down the undercover students. The search was hectic and exciting as we raced through stores and down roads. At the end my team found 7 of the 9 tricksters and ended up winning the competition. We got gift cards to Forever Yogurt, so a group of us went out for some froyo afterward. So, so yummy.

Tuesday, I went to the beach with my fellow Buckeye, Ben Jenkins. On Tuesdays, we do beach outreach, where we go talk to college students chilling on the beach. However, for some reason, there weren't a lot of people at the beach when we arrived and most who were there were families or kids' camps. So instead of talking to other students, Ben and I talked to each other and got to know each other better. We shared life stories, talked about our families, what we had experienced with faith, and other such things. I felt really blessed to be able to learn more about my brother in Christ.

God has continued to build up my friendships with other students from OSU. There are 20 of us here and, like Ben, I am getting to know them better and better. Going back to school next fall is going to be an awesome experience, since I'll have these relationships to go back to and we can all take our work here for the Lord back to Columbus and continue the spread of the Gosple throughout the Buckeye Nation. It will be interesting to see what great things God does through us.

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.