And, here is a picture of Ivan "enjoying" it.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Mmmmmm.....
Alright, this harkens way back to one of my first VZ stories. I just wanted to share a quick picture of the "devil ray". 
And, here is a picture of Ivan "enjoying" it.
And, here is a picture of Ivan "enjoying" it.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
First Meeting!
Today was our first "reunion semanal" (weekly meeting) of Vida Estudiantil at ULA. It was a very odd (as opposed to what will usually occur) meeting because the school was closed today. The school was closed because tonight is the inaugural festival (parade, or something along those lines) of the university games between the universities in Venezuela (which we will be attending, perhaps I'll have more stories about those later....). Due to the school closure, we couldn't get a room on campus in which to have our weekly meeting - so we had it in the office (which is just across the street from campus). We did a mad scramble yesterday evening (because no plans had been finalized until then) to invite as many people as we could and email and text as many people as we had numbers for to tell them to come.
Our mad dash efforts, and God's providence (of course!) brought a ton of new people to the meeting (and of course, many "old" students as well). We ran out of chairs and a majority of people had to sit along the wall/edge of the balcony.
At the meeting, we had some get-to-know-you fun game type activities. 2 great emcees, Andrea and Jatniel, and one brave student (he's also on the servant team) Jesús who gave part of his testimony, for the message. He did a great job. I was impressed and really appreciated getting to hear part of his story.
For a big finale we did some acoustic worship. Keren and Llanira led us in a few "alabanzas" (Spanish worship). I didn't know the words, but I had fun clapping along and enjoying the joyful atmosphere that these students create in their praise of the Lord.
All in all the meeting went great! We always provide lunch after the meeting (we have a great friend named Sonia who works at the church CENFOL and she helps us out by making a huge amount of food). People stayed, ate, and chatted until we finally left at 3:30 (the meeting started ast 12!). Anyway, it was encouraging and fun - praise the Lord!
A side note: 1 of the 3 delinquent supporters is no longer delinquent, keep praying about the other ones, it's really important! I can't do God's work here without you all and your support. Thank you everyone!
Our mad dash efforts, and God's providence (of course!) brought a ton of new people to the meeting (and of course, many "old" students as well). We ran out of chairs and a majority of people had to sit along the wall/edge of the balcony.
At the meeting, we had some get-to-know-you fun game type activities. 2 great emcees, Andrea and Jatniel, and one brave student (he's also on the servant team) Jesús who gave part of his testimony, for the message. He did a great job. I was impressed and really appreciated getting to hear part of his story.For a big finale we did some acoustic worship. Keren and Llanira led us in a few "alabanzas" (Spanish worship). I didn't know the words, but I had fun clapping along and enjoying the joyful atmosphere that these students create in their praise of the Lord.
All in all the meeting went great! We always provide lunch after the meeting (we have a great friend named Sonia who works at the church CENFOL and she helps us out by making a huge amount of food). People stayed, ate, and chatted until we finally left at 3:30 (the meeting started ast 12!). Anyway, it was encouraging and fun - praise the Lord!
A side note: 1 of the 3 delinquent supporters is no longer delinquent, keep praying about the other ones, it's really important! I can't do God's work here without you all and your support. Thank you everyone!
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Please Pray...
Hello Friends, I need your help/prayers!
I'm here in Venezuela, as you know if you have been following these entries, doing my job working with Vida Estudiantil. One problem, I have 3 supporters, who committed monthly amounts to support my being here - and they are not keeping up with that promise - I was $300 short for the month of September! Therefore, that is my urgent prayer request at the moment - pray that these people would come through with their promised amounts and/or I would find some new supporters who would be so generous as to pick up where these folks are lacking. If you yourself, or someone else you know, might be interested - let me know!
On a much more excited note - ministry here has been going really well! It took me a while to get back into a groove of sharing the gospel on campus for 6 hours a day.....but now I have seen the Lord really at work and it's simply exciting. We have seen 4 people accept Christ as their personal Lord and Savior in the last week (I personally got to witness two of those!!). We have only been sharing on the campuses for one week, but already we are trusting the Lord with big plans. Previously, the STINT teams have worked on the Facultad Humanidades (Humanities, because that's where the language students are and many speak English!) and have done a little work on Hechicera (Sciences campus, very few English speakers). Yesterday, we took the opportunity of a few willing Vida Estudiantil students as tour guides to take us to the Faculties of Medicine, Odontology and Music. We spent some time sharing the gospel on Medicina, and praying over all three campuses. These are just a few of the wide spread ULA campuses in the city. We are lifting them up in prayer to the Lord and trusting in Him to raise up movements on each campus. It's going to be quite a stretch for us humans, but for God - it'll be the blink of an eye!
More later....
I'm here in Venezuela, as you know if you have been following these entries, doing my job working with Vida Estudiantil. One problem, I have 3 supporters, who committed monthly amounts to support my being here - and they are not keeping up with that promise - I was $300 short for the month of September! Therefore, that is my urgent prayer request at the moment - pray that these people would come through with their promised amounts and/or I would find some new supporters who would be so generous as to pick up where these folks are lacking. If you yourself, or someone else you know, might be interested - let me know!
On a much more excited note - ministry here has been going really well! It took me a while to get back into a groove of sharing the gospel on campus for 6 hours a day.....but now I have seen the Lord really at work and it's simply exciting. We have seen 4 people accept Christ as their personal Lord and Savior in the last week (I personally got to witness two of those!!). We have only been sharing on the campuses for one week, but already we are trusting the Lord with big plans. Previously, the STINT teams have worked on the Facultad Humanidades (Humanities, because that's where the language students are and many speak English!) and have done a little work on Hechicera (Sciences campus, very few English speakers). Yesterday, we took the opportunity of a few willing Vida Estudiantil students as tour guides to take us to the Faculties of Medicine, Odontology and Music. We spent some time sharing the gospel on Medicina, and praying over all three campuses. These are just a few of the wide spread ULA campuses in the city. We are lifting them up in prayer to the Lord and trusting in Him to raise up movements on each campus. It's going to be quite a stretch for us humans, but for God - it'll be the blink of an eye!
More later....
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
2 new brothers in Christ!
Dearest Friends, today I have the best news to share with you! Let me backtrack a bit first.....yesterday, we spent our first day on campus. This included many introductions with students already involved in Vida Estudiantil (including many hugs and kisses, as per the norm here). After a few rounds of handshakes, cheek kisses, and translation confusion between Spanish and English, we paired off (some with Venezuelans, and some of us with each other) to go SHARING. For those of you unfamiliar with Campus Crusade lingo - sharing involves going up to random students on the campus, asking them if they'd give you 10 minutes of their time to talk about religious things, and proceeding to do so. There is a also a booklet that can be used as a tool when talking about the gospel, some people use it, some people don't - it's really a great tool for people who are more visual learners though. Basically, our afternoon consisted in meandering the campus and chatting with several friendly Venezuelan students, talking about religion, sharing the gospel, and inviting them to our weekly meeting (which is similar to a church service for youth). Yesterday, I was introduced to Rosemar (also known as Patricia, not sure why) - a student who is very involved in Vida Estudiantil already, and has no fear whatsoever of going sharing. She also speaks nearly fluent English (she studies modern languages at the university). She and I went sharing together and talked to several students - an Italian Catholic who is already involved in another movement, 2 guys who couldn't chat for long because they had to leave for class, and one girl (oddle enough named America) who we talked to for the longest. She believed in almost everything that we said to her, but she had a very hard time getting past the idea that God's grace could cover everyone the same, that she could be on par with murderers and thieves. She had a hard time understanding that "doing good things" didn't guarantee your eternal life in heaven. We left her with the booklet to read over again when she has a chance. I hope we planted some seeds in America's life, I'm pretty sure we did, it sounds like she really desires to live a good life and to be in harmony with Dios - there are just a few things in her way. Please pray for America!
Today, we went up to a different part of the ULA campus (it's about 20 minutes farther north of Humanidades). Hechicera (the sciences campus) is much bigger than Humanidades, but is also harder to "share" at because none of the students (or hardly any speak English). Amanda and I spent the morning sharing together (she doesn't speak a ton of Spanish yet, so I spent a good portion of the time translating, but we worked well together as a team, she is a very eloquent and wise speaker in English, and I was able to translate, for the most part). We even shared with the lady who sells phone calls (that's right, you can buy one phone call or one text message from a lady with a cell phone on the street) and cigarrettes. She was enthralled by the book, and so grateful for the work we were doing on campus. She told us that she had received Christ long ago, and was so excited that we were telling people the good news, because she thinks that there aren't enough believers who actually share their faith. We also spent a while talk to two incoming freshman who were still trying to get life at the university figured out. They actually had already been shared the 4 Laws with by a missionary from Colombia - cool!
In the afternoon, after a questionable lunch of mystery meat in brown sauce, we exchanged partners and I got to hang out with Llanira (pronounced Ja-nee-ta). Llanira speaks no English, so it was a test for me not only to communicate with her but to also not have anyone to look to if I needed a word translated that I didn't know. Luckily, we serve a God is who SO GOOD. God was able to use my confusion in Spanish, and stumbling through the gospel presentation, along with Llanira's flawless presentation of the booklet to bring the first guy that we talked to into relationship with Him!!!!!!!!! Carlos received Jesus today with us in the Ingeniera (engineering) building. We basically just asked him, if he had the chance to be in a relationship with God, would he want to be.....he said, of course!! We got his contact information and we're really hoping to see Carlos at the first Vida Estudiantil meeting next week :) Our second new friend was Jose, another young student of Quimica (chemistry) who happened to be waiting on a friend and have just the right amount of time to talk to us. We shared the gospel with him as well, and after a lot of contemplation - he also prayed to receive Christ into his life! What a day!
Things to pray for:
a. Pray for America - that the seeds we planted will be watered by someone later on, or that the Lord would bring us back into contact with her.
b. Pray for our new brothers - Carlos and Jose! Pray that they would show up to do follow ups for learning more about Christ and learning what it means to be a Christian.
c. Continue to pray for the health and unity of my team. We have only been here for 3 weeks and have only been doing our "actual work" for 2 days, but we are already run dowwwwwwn. We are (espcially myself) simply exhausted by the length of the days and the amount of mental capacity it takes to translate every word of every hour of every day. Yesterday, I thought I felt the flu coming on......pray that it stays away!
d. Pray for our hearts, as we're pouring out so much every day on campus, it's easy to begin to see this as a job rather than as a privilege. We want to do this each and every day out of love for Christ alone, this ministry should come as an overflow of that love in our hearts.
e. Administrative details - there are a lot of details, I won't even begin to go into them.....but pray for them, there are a lot of silly little things to worry about, that could easily distract us from ministry and God's will.
Thanks so much everyone!
Today, we went up to a different part of the ULA campus (it's about 20 minutes farther north of Humanidades). Hechicera (the sciences campus) is much bigger than Humanidades, but is also harder to "share" at because none of the students (or hardly any speak English). Amanda and I spent the morning sharing together (she doesn't speak a ton of Spanish yet, so I spent a good portion of the time translating, but we worked well together as a team, she is a very eloquent and wise speaker in English, and I was able to translate, for the most part). We even shared with the lady who sells phone calls (that's right, you can buy one phone call or one text message from a lady with a cell phone on the street) and cigarrettes. She was enthralled by the book, and so grateful for the work we were doing on campus. She told us that she had received Christ long ago, and was so excited that we were telling people the good news, because she thinks that there aren't enough believers who actually share their faith. We also spent a while talk to two incoming freshman who were still trying to get life at the university figured out. They actually had already been shared the 4 Laws with by a missionary from Colombia - cool!
In the afternoon, after a questionable lunch of mystery meat in brown sauce, we exchanged partners and I got to hang out with Llanira (pronounced Ja-nee-ta). Llanira speaks no English, so it was a test for me not only to communicate with her but to also not have anyone to look to if I needed a word translated that I didn't know. Luckily, we serve a God is who SO GOOD. God was able to use my confusion in Spanish, and stumbling through the gospel presentation, along with Llanira's flawless presentation of the booklet to bring the first guy that we talked to into relationship with Him!!!!!!!!! Carlos received Jesus today with us in the Ingeniera (engineering) building. We basically just asked him, if he had the chance to be in a relationship with God, would he want to be.....he said, of course!! We got his contact information and we're really hoping to see Carlos at the first Vida Estudiantil meeting next week :) Our second new friend was Jose, another young student of Quimica (chemistry) who happened to be waiting on a friend and have just the right amount of time to talk to us. We shared the gospel with him as well, and after a lot of contemplation - he also prayed to receive Christ into his life! What a day!
Things to pray for:
a. Pray for America - that the seeds we planted will be watered by someone later on, or that the Lord would bring us back into contact with her.
b. Pray for our new brothers - Carlos and Jose! Pray that they would show up to do follow ups for learning more about Christ and learning what it means to be a Christian.
c. Continue to pray for the health and unity of my team. We have only been here for 3 weeks and have only been doing our "actual work" for 2 days, but we are already run dowwwwwwn. We are (espcially myself) simply exhausted by the length of the days and the amount of mental capacity it takes to translate every word of every hour of every day. Yesterday, I thought I felt the flu coming on......pray that it stays away!
d. Pray for our hearts, as we're pouring out so much every day on campus, it's easy to begin to see this as a job rather than as a privilege. We want to do this each and every day out of love for Christ alone, this ministry should come as an overflow of that love in our hearts.
e. Administrative details - there are a lot of details, I won't even begin to go into them.....but pray for them, there are a lot of silly little things to worry about, that could easily distract us from ministry and God's will.
Thanks so much everyone!
A Few Photos
Mis chicas en La Plaza Glorias Patrias
....we've discovered that there is no guarantee of what items will be in the stores from day to day. We spent days without milk (putting yogurt on our cereal) and when we did find milk it went bad in less than a day....what can ya do! Needless to say finding fare here can sometimes be interesting.
The team hangin' out in front of church.
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