And the Ball Rolls

I have decided I am just going to continue updating you all on the things that are going on currently - I feel if I wait to catch you all up on my trip this summer you will miss out on the current things God is already doing here at Penn State!

So with that said, let me introduce you to FALL of 2008 at PENN STATE!!!

Imagine this, a still quiet town of basically not many people. Then imagine hoards and hoards of student piling into the town with their cars packed full of family members and apartment/dorm room items. The students flooded the town this Saturday (there was a line of traffic for miles and miles entering the town as we were leaving for our retreat...) Now the town is filled with students and there is liveliness in this place again! I was walking home last night and saw all the students sitting in circles on lawn chairs on their porches, most drinking (ha), but enjoying the beautiful summer weather we're having here. You can tell they're all anticipating the year, what will come, how hard school will be, who their friends will be, who they'll date...etc.

On Saturday we had our Oaks Retreat (Oaks is the name we've given to our Student Leaders of Navs here. Its after the verse in Isaiah 61 that talks about becoming oaks of righteousness for God). We had around 70 people at this overnight leadership training! That's crazy - and almost 20 more than we had last year.



Here is a photo of our new student leadership group.



This is a photo of Lauren and me at the Oaks retreat. She is now a Junior and able to be on the Oaks team. She was in Colorado Springs all summer at Glen Eyrie doing a summer program with Navs, and I was able to hang out with her a couple times this summer. I enjoy her so much!

Then after our leadership retreat was over, we got back into State College on Sunday, and went and set up our traditional Freshmen BBQ to recruit new freshmen to Navs. It was crazy! SOOOO MANY STUDENTS. Overwhelming for me since we had just spent the last 24 hours catching up with students...then we jumped right back into a hundred or so students, a small front yard, and a bbq!



Here is Dave Bowman (he oversees most that goes on at Penn State Navs...we love dave!) grilling for our students!



And here is a small glimpse of the mayhem that was happening in the front yard. We had two pages FILLED with new freshmen names of students that wanted to get involved. That was WAY more than we had last year. We are praising God for Him bringing so many students already! We are excited for the new year.

It was so fun for me also because I got to see a lot of my Bible study girls show up at the BBQ and we reunited and connected again and it was so fun seeing them. It was weird to reflect and think that a whole year has gone by. What was awesome for me was to see these girls, who are now sophomores, jump into this BBQ and start befriending new freshmen students. One girl said, "I guess its our time now to turn around and recruit!" It was great to see them want to involve new students in the same way they were involved and embraced last year. LOVE IT!

I am also thankful because this year I will continue leading a Bible study with the same girls in it - I also will continue meeting with the same girls. This is great because it allows me to get even deeper with them. So although I am helping this week to recruit freshmen, my primary focus this year will remain with the sophomore students.



Here we are! Ready for year 2! There's even a new girl in this photo (top right in the bright pink) named Amelia and she is excited to make new friends and join our study - she is a transfer student and doesn't know many people! YAY for new friends!

Now we are starting to booth this week. We'll set up tables in the dorms that have information about the Navs and when our events are, our retreats and Bible studies. We also have a spiritual survey that they can take to enter a pizza drawing. From those surveys we collect names of new students interested in joining a Bible study or hearing more about spiritual things. Later this week we visit them in their dorms and recruit them to our studies - and thus begins how I collected the girls I am with now! Its coming full circle again.

Please pray that we would make great connections with new students and that those students who are lost and are hungering for something more would fall upon our informational tables or would connect with some Nav students in the dorms so they could meet us and we could include them and hopefully introduce them to Jesus!