So, we're here. We moved out to AZ and finally found a house (see pic), which seems to be working out great for us. The girls love it. We spent about 2 weeks moving in (which still is not finished) and had a week of meetings with our new team (see other pic. We are still waiting on one couple and a single girl to join us in late summer). We had two days where the team evaluated the old year, which was good for Curt and I to get caught up a little. And then two days of planning for the new year to come. It was a really good time of taking the box and blowing it apart. We asked questions like, "What can we do more effectively? What are our priorities? How can we keep our students focused on actually being out among the unchurched and trying to reach them?". We came up with some really good values that we want to hold onto as a team. One of those was "Being with the lost!". From that stemmed ideas about how to train our students and be involved in their life but not take up all of their time so that they have no time for ministry. What Curt and I both had a hard time with in college was that we became Christians and then were so involved in all the activities that we never spent time with unbelievers. We want to see the students out there and excited!
The team agreed to try out storying among the students and want to dedicate about 3 months of the leaderships' meeting times to just storying. If they are trained in it and like it, they can take it to their ministry hubs (where they are pouring into; i.e. their sorority).
We will be leaving in a couple of weeks to go to CO. We will be spending a week there with other staff and students learning more about Lifelines; their values, goals and mission. Lifelines is a part of Campus Crusade for Christ that uses the outdoors to form relationships with students. The staff also always debrief the students they take out after their experiences, which of course leads to spiritual topics. The more we learn, the more excited we are getting. Please pray for us as we travel to CO and spend time getting educated!