new vocab

I still find it funny to notice the differences in vocabulary and pronunciation of words between Aussies and myself. I learned a new word last week- what I call a french braid, they call a "plat". I'm always learning!

And so, as I've been here over 8 months now, I must confess that I've adapted to some new terms:

college- "uni"

shopping cart- "trolley"

sweat shirt- "jumper"

gas/gas station- "petrol"/"petrol station"

trunk (of a car)- "boot"

candy- "lollies"

ketchup- "tomato sauce"

french fries- "chips"

Those ones definitely roll off the tongue with no hesitation. yikes! I of course still get made fun of-- there will be a never ending banter between correct/incorrect words and pronunciation i think... it doesn't get old :)

PS. We're going on a massive camping trip next weekend and I'm introducing the Aussies to s'mores! Thanks to Nate's girlfriend who transported "the goods"; you can't find graham crackers, jet-puffed marshmallows or hershey's bars in australia! Good ol' American summer tradition :)

the wonderful world of apologetics

I've been blessed with a team of guys who can study and speak about apologetics VERY well. God has gifted them with a brain like that. As I've heard them talk theology/philosophy/world views, etc for the last 8 months, I'm reminded of how much I don't know. Apologetics has never been something that I've attempted to study, but as I encounter more and more Aussies who are set in their post-modern ways, who are stuck on "tolerance" of all religious beliefs (meaning, a tolerance that says EVERYONE is correct)... I find myself frustrated and unable to stand up for the Gospel adequately.

So... I'm excited to announce that I'm doing something about it! One of my financial supporters gave me a book, "The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell. Its a MASSIVE text-book style book on answering those challenging questions that people often have about Christianity... and I've actually cracked it open and started to study.

I'm excited to engage my brain in a challenging way again... not being a student for over a year now, I forget that I actually liked studying and taking exams! (just a little bit)

Feel free to hold me accountable or ask me what I'm learning!

WWJD? seriously!?

Oh how I remember those WWJD? bracelets from middle school... I wasn't a Christian then and thought they were pretty lame... especially because the people who I saw wearing them didn't really act how I presume Jesus would act. (I think about Jesus as a pre-teen... how did he live through that age and NEVER SIN!? amazing!)

God has been showing me lately how much I do NOT live like Christ. God (Jesus) became man to live among us and give us an example of how to lead our lives. I had this "lightbulb moment" the other week about those "challenging people" in our lives... about those who sometimes bother us more than others or who get on our nerves more than they should. I had a realization of this: Jesus lived the MOST relational life of anyone who has ever lived! He hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, hypocrites, religious leaders who glorified themselves... He was doubted, scoffed at, betrayed, murdered... He lived among people who I imagine are heaps more challenging than those I live among... YET, he never sinned! He never responded to sin with sin. never ever!

In all this realization, God has been showing me how sinful my mind is... how judgmental and critical I am, how quick I am to get irritated and annoyed. Boy, its a blessing and a curse to ask God, "make me more like Jesus!"... because HE WILL! and it has so far involved humility in ways I've not experienced before, and a dramatic encounter with my sinful nature. God is at work in me, and its a great and awesome thing when the Holy Spirit brings about change... I'm nowhere near "changed" in this matter yet, but I've found myself frequently asking "What would Jesus do?" It helps me to focus on HIM rather than myself.

Whew!

every thought captive

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5

As I've gone through ups and downs in ministry throughout this semester, I can't help but wonder how or why I can know Jesus, know His commands, know what His Word says is true of me, know that Its only with God that anything I do is possible or relevant... YET... its in my insecurities, its in my pride, its in my American need to be so darn efficient and on top of things, that I get caught up in myself and lack dependence upon God.

When I'm exposed to my own doubts, and exposed to opportunities to be self-sufficient, impatient or judgmental... I have a choice! I can 1) go with the flow and once again fall short and cling to my pride and abilities, once again allowing unhealthy thoughts to take me captive or 2)I can recognize the danger in this mindset and turn away... running back to God and the truth of His Word.

As I serve here and live life alongside college students who are on all sorts of spiritual journeys, I want to love them and be able to point them toward the God who loves them and is the only place where they could have the desires of their heart met. But in the last few weeks I've been more easily irritated and impatient... and I've recognized that I've been pouring myself out in ministry without first being filled with God's love and strength. I've been serving Him out of my own strength which is always always ALWAYS insufficient!

I must give myself first to the Lord and then to ministry. I dare say that my ministry nearly became my walk with God! I'm looking forward to going away to our Mid Year Conference for a week of focusing on Him again :)

twenty three and still going strong :)

well, i'm 23! My birthday (june 15) was a huge reminder of how blessed I am... Thanks to all my friends here and back home who showed me love and helped to make my birthday special :) So many thoughtful birthday cards and gifts, and my roommates Dani and Amanda even made me TGI Friday's potato skins! My FAVE! To top it off, we played capture the flag with our students on campus... thats what normal 23-year olds do, right? haha.

Ministry-wise, we're mostly off campus now. Heading into the 2nd week of finals, my team and I are prepping for MYC (Mid Year Conference) thats coming up June 30-july 4. I'm doing the set design, so been trying to use my creative energy to paint a banner and come up with other sweet ideas... also, i'm co-leading two ministry training seminars, so been preparing for that. One called Into the Harvest, which is about having a lifetime of evangelism, reaching people with the Gospel whoever and wherever you are... and the second one is called Personal Discipleship.. about making disciples and helping younger Christians to grow in their faith, targeted at student leaders. Its been hard for me to workout what to do with my time... and hard to deal with feeling "guilty" about not doing hands-on ministry all the time, and instead, doing more behind the scenes tasks. I'm NOT good with structure-free days... I need appointments, I need timelines, I need a plan... and the last week and half I have not had that. So this week is a new week! I have specific times to meet with students, to share my faith on campus and to even have coffee with one of the summer project Directors, Sarah. Its going to be a good week!

On the topic of summer project... theres a group from the Midwest here for another week and a half. In total, they'll be here 6 weeks, and their primary focus is to do evangelism on all 4 Griffith campuses. They have been a HUGE blessing to us! Especially since we've been off campus and not having as many conversations with non-christians as we usually are... its awesome to know that there are 12 students and 2 staff sharing their faith monday through friday for 5 whole hours! So far, I think they've seen 5 students put their faith in Christ! Praise God! He is doing amazing things through them, and will continue to do so until they head back to the states on July 2nd.

Please pray for God's continued guidance in their lives and that God will orchestrate divine appointments in their final days spent sharing their faith on campus!

i'm back!

well i've been pretty poor at keeping up with this blogging thing.. oops! To update you on the ministry, things are going well! God is moving, He is answering prayers like CRAZY! Its been so encouraging knowing that so many people have been partnering with us in focused, intentional prayer the past week... At our weekly meeting called Fusion, this past tuesday, we had heaps of new people there! Two new girls that I spoke with really connected with the topic of that evening, "living a fulfilling life." I felt blessed to be able to have spiritual conversations with both of these girls, one of them has just started walking with the Lord again after falling away from Him for a few years, and the other girl is an international student from Zimbabwe who told me she had been thinking about these things for a while now. This just goes to show that God knows what He is doing, he brought both of these girls to Fusion that night to here a message that pointed them even more toward Christ... Awesome!

On another note, the summer project arrives here on wednesday morning.. 15 students and staff from the Upper Midwest region will be joining us for six weeks! They will be primarily doing evangelism on campus but also partnering along with us in all areas of our ministry. Please pray!

I'll work on updating you all more regularly :)

God bless you!

GIANT JENGA!

This past thursday my team and I threw together a last minute first-year student outreach. We bought some prizes and gifts for the students and set up a giant Jenga game in the middle of a popular part of campus. To be honest, I was feeling pessimistic about this outreach because we had not done much planning or preparation and had no idea who would even show up. We just prayed that God would bring the right people to meet us.. that His hand would be over our outreach

and would provide us with opportunities to glorify Him that day.

Well God showed up. Its amazing what a ridiculous-looking game of Giant Jenga can do to bring a crowd of people together! At times there would be 50 students gathered around to watch all the blocks come tumbling down. We invited students to join in on the game (which was the whole point of us playing it) and there was much fun had by all. I personally was able to have some really good conversations with women standing around... I'll tell you one quick story:

One girl came and sat just about as close to me as you could possibly be.. which was a little odd because there were PLENTY of other seats on the large bench in the area. I knew that God placed her next to me for a reason, so I talked with her. Its amazing how easy it is to get into spiritual conversation-- All I had to do was ask her what she studied and when she reciprocated the question I answered that I'm not actually a student. She then asked me why I was here and what student life is all about and BAM! It's as simple as telling her we're a Christian group on campus, and we want to get to know Griffith students and what they think about Christian things... "I'm interested, what's been your experience with Christianity?"

She was FULL of questions! I found out that she calls herself "orthodox", which meant that she's been baptized as a baby and thats about it. She never goes to church and believes that there is a God out there. Long story short... She stayed and was engaged in deep conversation for over 2 hours!! I look forward to meeting up with her soon and being able to answer more of her questions. I think we're going to go through a 6-week "Christianity Explained" course to get into who Jesus is and WHY He is the central figure of the Christian faith.

Here's some more photos of "Giant Jenga". The guys especially got really into it :)

It was such an encouraging day and my team and I were completely in awe of God... that He used our last-minute outreach for His glory. He showed us that we had NO control over who would show up or how "well" it would go, and that all we have to do is take steps of faith and leave the results up to Him.

Praise God!!

"You of little faith...why do you doubt?" -Jesus (Matthew 14:31)

february prayer letter

Logan campus!

"Market day" on each of the campuses is where every student club and lots of organizations/companies come and hand out freebies, trying to get students to join or find out more... so as Student Life, we do "Chupa-Chup" surveys... a short spiritual interest survey in exchange for a free lollypop ("chupa-chup).

**see photo below for the survey questions... hope you can squint

So, today we ventured out to Griffith's Logan campus where we currently don't have a Student Life ministry happening. We went praying that the Christians on that campus would come find us and want to join the ministry there and WOW did He answer our prayers!! I personally spoke with 4 different ladies who were excited about getting involved-- two girls even said to me, "we didn't have any class today, we came to campus to try and find a Christian club." WOW!! Praise God :)

It was such an encouraging day-- in fact, the past 8 days or so have been! We have been able to meet SO many Christians and have way too many students to call back who have shown interest in either talking about Christian beliefs, hearing more about Student Life bible studies, etc, and taking a six-week course about the foundations of the Christian faith. Now when i say "too many" i dont really mean it.. but boy, are we going to be busy! It will be GREAT!!

doing surveys.. this wasn't even posed!!

AC/DC experience 2010

Now i'm not actually a fan of AC/DC... and the only song I could tell you is "highway to hell" which isn't too great of a song... BUT this is still pretty cool: across the street from where I live is the Queensland Sport and Athletic Centre where AC/DC just played their largest outdoor venue anywhere, ever! Apparently they're on their 2010 "back to home" Australian tour.

At 6pm tonight my housemate and I were walking down to our guy teammates' house, where we passed all the concert-goers on their way... Then, at 11pm as we were walking home, we caught the tail end of their show, saw the fireworks, and joined up with the thousands of AC/DC fans as they left the stadium. People EVERYWHERE. blinking devil-horned headbands EVERYWHERE. even small children who attended the concert with their middle-aged-youthfully-dressed parents semi-EVERYWHERE. It was the most entertaining walk home I've ever had in my life.

heaps of people on their way to the show as we walked past

after the concert... crowds of people leaving the stadium as we walked past.

january newsletter + a little blurb of an update

hello blogging world! here's my latest newsletter. So far nothing all too blog-worthy has happened. I've been in-country just over 3 weeks now and things have just started to pick up.

We have had a few team meetings... been planning impact camp (our student leadership weekend which is 11-13 of Feb.) been meeting students and getting to know our student leaders. Last week we played ultimate frisbee and also had a dinner/movie night.

This upcoming weekend of Impact Camp, I'm in charge of food. I really love to plan, organize AND cook, so I figured I'd volunteer for this job! Our group is 30 people-- all are Aussies except my team-- 5 Americans. My first problem-- what I would choose to cook might be way different than what Aussies would choose-- for example: anything with beet root on it. (they eat it all the time!)

Secondly-- what does it take to figure out how to buy the right amount of food for 30 people?! 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 2 afternoon teas, 2 dinners and 2 suppers. (a tip: "afternoon tea" happens at 3pm and its a snack, and "supper" happens at 9pm and its also a snack.) Ruth is helping me-- she's a friend and girl I'll be discipling this year. Bonus: she also has a CAR so I don't have to take the shopping cart (trolley!) home with me from the supermarket.

I'm excited to be having tacos as one of our meals! Apparently mexican food is hard to come by in Australia, and when you do find it its never any good. Now I can't guarantee that I can make the best tacos on the planet-- but they are delicious :)

As far as things coming up... after Impact camp we have a week of planning time (which we will definitely need!) Then we have O-week (first year orientation week) which will be really busy for us. Then after O-week the semester starts and we'll be in full swing!

Thats all for now! Thank you for reading :)

Blessings, Emily

am i blog-savvy?

Ok people. I've got something to admit. As I read the blogs that my friends keep I'm SUPER intimidated. It doesn't help that several of them are English majors, and have an incredible wit about them as they write about the everyday things in their lives-- whether they're in Nigeria or starting a teaching job in Minnesota-- I feel I can't compare.

I realize, however, that competition isn't the point. Duh. I'm here to invite you to be a part of the adventure that God has placed me in here in Australia-- to share how He is at work in my life and in this country, to give Him the praise and glory, and to add bits and pieces of my experiences this year.

So maybe I'm not all too savvy in this blogging world... but I'll give it my best! Its not supposed to be about me anyway.

settling in

G'day! Its another hot, humid and sunny day here in MacGregor (the suburb of Brisbane where I live). Yesterday was a national holiday here-- Australia day! Pretty similar to the fourth of july for us.. Very patriotic, lots of barbecues, red white and blue, aussie flags everywhere and fireworks at night!

Theres a picture of me in front of the beautiful city. I got an entire patriotic outfit from K-mart so I fit in. My shirt even said "100% Aussie". (oops. I lied).

Today marks our team's official start to the year. We had a week at a staff conference, then we've spent the last week settling in and "nesting". We had our first team meeting today-- the most unique meeting I've ever witnessed. 3 of us were here and 2 were still in the US! Nate joined us on skype from a Caribou coffee in St. Cloud Minnesota, and Amanda joined us via skype from her home in Racine, WI. Here's our first ever team picture:

We got a lot accomplished today and are having another planning meeting tomorrow. Praise God that we have this incredible use of technology at our finger tips so we can get things going even if we're not on the same continent.

Thats all for now! Please pray (still!) for Nate and Amanda to arrive quickly! Nate's still waiting on his Visa, and Amanda has to wait to come with him.

Thanks and God bless you!

hello from the land down under :)

Hello friends and family! I've been in Australia for 3 days now, and am adjusting to the heat and humidity fairly well. Last night my teammate Ben and I joined 2 others at a Cricket match at the largest professional Cricket stadium in all of Queensland. What a cultural experience! It was a lot of fun-- especially once I understood what was going on on that field!

Tomorrow we leave for a 5-day staff conference called Nexus. I'm excited to meet other CCC staff in the country and prepare for the upcoming year of ministry! We'll be near the ocean as well, which I am especially excited for. Please pray that God would use this next week at the conference to prepare me for ministry this upcoming year!

God bless, Emily

PLEASE READ!

Hello friends and family :)
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog! I want you to know that my intentions for documenting my time here is so that you can share in this experience with me. I'm here as a missionary--Christ's ambassador, to share His love with students and help them to grow in their Christian faith. I want to thank each of you who have supported me financially and prayerfully, and for your encouragement along the way. I also want you to know that I also plan on including photos, stories and insights into every aspect of this year-- the fun things we'll do on weekends, trips to the beach and other travel experiences-- but its ALL to the glory of God. I hope that you'll be encouraged by how God is moving and by what He is teaching me through this experience!

Blessings, Emily

prayer letter posts

A friend told me how to do this and I'm just giving it a shot. I'm planning on posting my monthly prayer letters on my blog throughout the year. (this was my October newsletter) Thanks Londa :)

its a new year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I feel so blessed to have been able to spend the past 5 new years eves surrounded by 1500 college believers at the Campus Crusade for Christ conference in Minneapolis, called TCX.

Twin Cities eXperience (TCX) is an incredible time to grow in your faith, learn practical applications and develop deep friendships with other Christians. I've made so many memories there during my 4 years as a college student, and this year was no exception. The theme was "RADIATE", and all about how we are called to radiate Christ's love to the people in our life, and take steps of faith so that everyone has an opportunity to follow Him. I'm so thankful that my dearest friends were there, many drove as far as 6 and a half hours to celebrate the new year in awesome community. There was fellowship, prayer, worship and of course, lots of dancing as we counted down 'till 2010.

I finally got to meet my STINT team mate, Amanda, and we hit it off right away :) The former stint team and our new team got to "pass the torch", so-to-speak, and I feel even more excited about this upcoming year of ministry. We also finally booked our flight! I leave January 12th!

I feel absolutely blessed with the best friends I could ask for. I'll miss you all this next year!

Much love and blessings in the new year,

Emily