He's about to Rise!

 

I hope that each of you has been having a great spring so far and that the allergies haven’t been too bad (they’ve beat me up a couple times this month already, but God is good). This month has been one full of abundant gifts from God. He keeps reminding me how much power there is in his name. We got to witness three students get baptized this month!!! Our students gathered around a campus pool to celebrate Meron, Jade, and Kalyn as they proclaimed that Jesus is Lord. Jade said, “I was frustrated with God, but he kept pursuing me. Everything I have been through, God has continued to pursue me.” Meron declared, “I have followed Jesus my whole life. Today I want to declare that to the world.” Kalyn said, “Jesus changed me and showed me he loved me”, which had us all in tears. Praise God for his Spirit stirring in these student’s hearts, we are so blessed and encouraged by them! I have been studying FOCUS on Jesus with several of the girls in my core this semester and God keeps using our time together to remind all of us just good He is. Each Scripture we get to read together is one that I savor and through which I do my best to incite the student in front of me to think deeper about what God is trying to say through Scripture and what it should ignite in our hearts. I have been just as challenged and forced to look at my own heart through each passage. Here are just a few of the ones that we’ve been reading together. “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” -Ephesians 4:2-3 “Then he said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” -Luke 9:23-25 “We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” -1John 4:19-21 This month I organized a half day spiritual retreat with my core! Five of us piled into Andrea’s car and drove up to Eisenhower state park to spend a couple of hours devoted to reading Scripture, journaling, and praying. The girls loved it!! We got to talk at the end about how their experience was, and each expressed thankfulness at the opportunity to just unplug and spend uninterrupted time with God. I am praying that this will be one of several activities like this we do this semester. Here is our plan if you’d like to use it for your own spiritual retreat! A few of our Mi Gente students got together this month and planned a worship night in Spanish, it was so great!! We had several students come who saw the advertisement for the event through flyers posted on campus. A couple of them had been involved several years ago and had drifted away, but they expressed a desire to get plugged back in!! I’m praying that God will use these students’ faithfulness to turn hearts back towards him!  Update: I started to write this blog a couple weeks ago and since then, one of the students who came to the worship night decided to check out my core this week!!! We got to welcome Jasmine into our group. Praise God!! Thank you so much for all of your support. I pray that each of you would feel the love of God so much more this month! Love y'all! Andrea S