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.