Some Thoughts on The New Year

There is something very beautiful about newness.

A newly fallen snowfall.

A newborn baby.

A new beginning.

A new creation.

The start of the new year is something that people around the world have celebrated for thousands of years ---- why? Because the idea of being new is so incredibly appealing.

People long to get a new start. To begin a new regimen. To create a new habit. And for all of these, it is understood that newer is better.

2011 has set the bar pretty high as far as years go. In the realm of milestones, it may have been a record-breaker. I had all sorts of new experiences, including graduating from college, getting my dream job, moving across the country, meeting an intern class full of best friends, and working my first year out of college. Friends got married, had babies, moved away. Others took new jobs, or began graduate school. I made plenty of terrible mistakes but learned plenty of lessons and was reminded so regularly of God's grace that it became an impossible reality to escape.

So now it's time for a new year to begin - a year that looks to hold a few less changes and transitions but that promises bright hope and continued adventure. In most respects I don't know what to expect, but I know that the Lord is at work in my heart and in my life and that newness is the way the Lord shows his continued love for us.

There is a part of growing up that is really difficult. Things change rapidly and in some ways you don't like. But there is also something profoundly beautiful about growing older. The constant newness is a picture of the way the Lord is at work - and the way that he is drawing his creation back to himself and towards a time when it will all be made entirely new. Right now we can only see bits and pieces and heaven is only alluded to - but things like the start to the new year remind us that we were made for newness. The old things will pass away, but we know even in our heart of hearts that the oldness is broken and unfinished. The New Year is beautiful because we have a deep longing in our hearts and souls for a New Heaven and a New Earth. And guess what?

It's coming.

Happy New year.

A Very Merry Christmastern

After recounting all of this semesters extraordinary events, it was hard to prepare to leave the home I made over the last three months. There were details to be arranged, gifts to be delivered, laundry to be done, rooms to be cleaned, and flights to be caught. So, naturally, there was no time for sleep to be had.

But returning to Oklahoma for a short visit has been wonderfully refreshing and encouraging. I was able to spend about five days in Norman/OKC with my college friends and cronies. As I mentioned to several people, "I've never been to Oklahoma for a visit - I've always come home to stay." Feeling as though a time limit had been set on all my conversations because of this made me spend the first day feeling rather disjointed (this may have also been due to delirium caused by lack of sleep). But after the first 24 hours were finished I fell right back into the swing of things - being in Norman just feels so natural! It was great to see faces I've missed and to laugh and cry with some of my dearest friends in the world - I, of course, extended about 100 invitations for people to come visit me in Seattle and sweetened the deal by offering my sofabed at no extra charge. :)

Being home in Tulsa has been great. It's great to spend time with my family, and some of our oldest and dearest friends still live in this city. I loved celebrating Christmas with my church home at Redeemer. I'm thankful for sweet friends who have been praying for me and loving me even from afar. I even got to spend time with a few former interns who helped pave the way for my own internship - all three of which are now at seminary with their spouses. Seminary in my future? Feeling more possible every day.

However, being home has also given me time to process this semester and to be thankful for the ways the Lord has blessed me this past year. It has made me anxious and excited to go back to Seattle and to continue the work that the Lord is preparing for me to do there! I am grateful to be feeling rejuvenated but also grateful that I have a job that I love and a God who loves me. Being an intern is unlike anything I've ever done before and the Lord is teaching me and demonstrating his love to me in ways I could have never imagined before now.

Mild, He lays His glory by - born that man no more may die.

The beauty of Christmas is Christ! He is life and light for us.

3 Monthaversary

Today is the three month anniversary of my Seattle 2011 arrival. The time has very literally flown by, and I depart for OK for the holidays on Friday! A recap of my first three months seemed to be in order.

In September

• I drove 2094 miles across the country with my mother in a Honda Civic full of all of my earthly possessions. This took 2.5 days and we crossed 7 states along our route.
• I moved into a house with five awesome roommates, only one of which I knew at all.
• We spent the first week of classes on campus meeting students and prepping for an unpredictable quarter of campus ministry with RUF.
• We had our first RUF of the quarter and my first RUF with the UW students and our campus minister, Ryan.
• We had our first social event, a bonfire on the beach at Golden Gardens.
• I attended my first Husky football game - they won!

In October

• I came to know and love the OU Sooners Club of Puget Sound - the alumni association chapter of my dear university where I was able to watch the football games all season.
• Our RUF small groups started meeting
• I had my first one-on-ones with the women in RUF as I started to form relationships with students
• Our house received a name - The Burrow - and had a housewarming party.
• Our house found a free upright piano on craigslist and moved it into our home - where it will stay until the end of its life because it ways no less than 1000 lbs.
• I attended the quarterly Presbytery meeting of our denominations pastors in our region - met many local pastors and met the new campus minister for the only other RUF in our region - Boise State.
• I found a church home at Grace Seattle in Capitol Hill.
• I joined a community group at Grace and began babysitting for the Mom's Bible study group once a week.
• We launched our second year of RUF Bible Study at Bellevue College on the east side of the lake and I got to know the students in that group as we wrestled with the book of Galatians.
• I started having students over every Tuesday to help me make cookies for a local homeless ministry.
• I hosted a Hymn Sing at my house and enjoyed an evening of worship with students in my living room.
• We had a dinner at Ryan & Amy's house for some of our new students to meet some of our returning students.
• We had game nights, played frisbee, played soccer, and grew to know one another better through fun activities throughout the week.
• I travelled to Atlanta for intern training and got to be encouraged in my work and in my heart by the fellow interns and other RUF staff.
• Saw Bill Gates speak on campus.
• We took 15 students to a local corn maze for some Halloween Fun!
• Ryan and I got to see four of our students perform with the UW Gospel Choir at halftime of the Husky football game with the University marching band!

In November

• I started my most successful endeavor to date, "Thank Goodness It's Thursday(s)" - affectionately referred to as "Donut Day" - which has become a weekly breakfast fellowship on campus and my favorite morning of the week.
• We played football in the pouring rain on Veterans Day with about 17 hardcore students.
• We took 16 students to volunteer with a ministry to hand out meals to one of the low-income neighborhoods in Seattle.
• We had 17 students sign up to be part of our student leadership team.
• My campus minister and his wife had a beautiful baby girl - Jane Elizabeth, born 11/9/11.
• I spent my first major holiday away from my family and travelled to Oregon to spend the holiday with a few friends from OK.
• Relationships with my students continued to grow and we began to delve deeper into the issues of sin, community, grace, and the church as we talked more and more regularly.
• I was able to attend an evangelism seminar with Jerram Barrs here in Seattle and brought some students along.
• I ran in the Seattle 5k to raise money for one of my favorite local non-profits, Street Youth Ministries and beat my personal best time!

In December

• We had three days on campus where students met to sing Christmas carols and hand out hot chocolate to students in Red Square.
• We had a very successful RUF Christmas party.
• I went to see three of our students perform with the UW Gospel Choir!
• We had a beautiful lessons and carols service as our last RUF of the quarter.
• Two of my dear friends from Oklahoma came to visit me.
• I hosted a girls night at my house where about 12 of us made DIY Christmas gifts, watched Christmas movies, and drank hot apple cider.

Before I leave I'll be at one more small group, Christmas caroling once more, and hosting all of RUF to my house for Brinner (Breakfast for Dinner) on Wednesday night! I am so very joyful to be in Seattle and to be serving with RUF here at the UW and I am so thankful for the prayers and provisions that the Lord has provided for me through all of YOU! Excited to be home for the holidays but I'm already looking forward to being back in Seattle in January!

Equipping to Serve

RUF's ministry model is based around this idea:

"Reaching students for Christ and equipping them to serve."

This means a couple of things. It means that first and foremost, we are seeking to build relationships with students that glorify and promote Christ in their lives. We do this through large group, small groups, and one-on-ones and it is an aspect of our ministry that is relational and powerful. When I was a student in RUF, this had enormous impact on my life as a growing believer and as a student in a new and unfamiliar environment being away from the lifelong influences that traditionally provided this instruction and support.

But the beautiful thing about what RUF does it that it does not simply seek to convert or encourage students in the faith and then stop there. They are reaching students for a reason - because RUF believes that part of being in Christ means living life in a new way. It means being aware of the needs of people around you - and it means giving and sacrificing our time and energy to serve on our campuses, in our churches, and in our communities. For some, that might mean that they step up to serve in their fraternities or sororities and seek to love the campus and the student body by serving in those leadership roles. For others, it may mean volunteering with a homeless ministry or tutoring kids after school as a way of serving and loving the community. Still others might be led to make greater commitments to serving in their local churches by helping out with the youth group or serving in the music ministry or teaching Sunday School. For me, it meant moving to Seattle to continue the work of RUF and to serve the students at the UW and the city of Seattle! It looks markedly different for each member of the church body - and that's good! It is so important that each person serves in a different capacity because there are so many different but essential needs to be met. The point that RUF seeks to drive home though is that you should be doing something. It encourages students to find the ways in which they can find opportunity to serve in whatever capacity they find opportunity for. College is such a pivotal age for this and it is important to be exposed to a lot of different opportunities for service and to build habits to participate in these ways.

Last week, our RUF participated with a ministry out of a local church (Greenlake) called "Good Friday." This is a once-a-month ministry that Greenlake has that brings warm meals and the Gospel to a part of town along a road called Aurora. Aurora used to be part of the main highway that went through Seattle from North to South before the interstate was built. After I-5 moved to town, much of Aurora's formerly booming business and hotel industry declined and deteriorated. These hotels and motels in North Seattle are now infamous for being a constant center for crime, drug activity, and prostitution. 16 students showed up on a Friday night in the cold to come and prepare and distribute meals to the residents of the motels along Aurora and offer them a friendly conversation and an invitation to church. This is an awesome example of how the Gospel is at work in the lives of our students and their willingness and desire to serve in the city and to try to meet the spiritual and physical needs that exist around them. I'm excited to see the ways that the Lord uses these desires to bring life and love into the hearts of our students and into the communities in which we live and serve!

Analog Groups

I've been in a lot of small group Bible studies over the years and have studied a wide variety of topics and books. A large number of these studies have spent time discussing the epistles of the New Testament - Ephesians and Galatians I've studied countless times and in countless contexts. Some of these studies have been led by others, some of these studies have been led by me. Other groups have looked at the Sermon on the Mount (hollaback to freshman bible study at OU), the Parables of Jesus, or other topics from various authors. However, it's probably been since early high school that I studied the book of Acts in depth (and in a Sunday school class, if I recall correctly).

The book of Acts is in the New Testament and writes largely about the apostles and the early church after the ascension of Jesus. What an essential book to study, right? This quarter, one of our senior students, Tom, has been leading a coed "analog group" on the book of Acts that I've been able to attend. It's been really great to revisit this book and to have an in-depth discussion about the things that were happening in the early church. Tom does a great job of getting our minds working and of also seeking to find ways to think about how to apply this word to our own lives and to the modern church. Here's a nice picture of us, followed by an "awkward" picture, as per OURUF tradition.

They're learning.

At UWRUF, we call our small groups "Analog Groups." This is to differentiate these groups as face-to-face relational groups rather than digital relationship groups. The philosophy is that we spend so much time alone or interacting with our technology that we often forget to spend time with other real people. We see this as essential to building community and we see small groups as essential to building a healthy large group. Hence, our groups are analog. No gadgets, no gizmos. Food, Fellowship, Fun.

The students that have come to this study are wrestling with these things and especially with questions like "How do we, as college students, share the Gospel and love the world through our limited means and limited time and energy?" It's been great to see the way these students are growing and exploring this book and seeking to translate knowledge into wisdom and passivity into action. I'm so glad to be able to spend time with these students once a week and work through these ideas with them.

When it Rains, It Pours

With the advent of winter and sunset by 5pm, I'm slowly having to adjust to living in a northern climate as well as find a way to welcome the gray skies and puddled sidewalks. Since I spent the summer in a drought and didn't see a drop of rain for four consecutive months, the rain is still a welcome friend - which is fortunate since I get to spend the next 6-8 months with rain clouds as a constant companion. From what the natives tell me, their summer came late this year, but fortunately for me, it's meant that fall has been graceful and uncommonly beautiful. This has meant plenty of sunny days to break up the rain and warmer temperatures than they're used to for this time of year. As someone who is learning the ropes in a new place and missing the sunniness of my hometown, these are things that I have been exceedingly thankful for, as the weather seems to be showing me grace by helping me adjust slowly rather than having to quit the sun cold turkey.

On Friday, however, the rains hit in full force. As it was Veterans Day, the schools out here actually had a vacation day - so we had made plans to take full advantage of this day off by playing touch football on campus with students. (We made it touch instead of tackle so the girls would come! Staci, Sydney, Kati and Allison were brave enough to come out and play with the boys!) In corresponding with the date - 11/11/11 - we had kickoff at 11:11:11 a.m. Right about the same time the rain began.

We played for about an hour and a half in the pouring rain. It was absolutely the most fun that I've had in awhile, and reminded me a lot of the snow football nights we had at OU during college. When the raindrops began to fall, we all seemed to make a sort of silent agreement that we were going to play on and resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd be soaked by the end. Usually the rain in Seattle settles for a light drizzle, but about halfway in we were caught in an absolute downpour. With resiliency and lightheartedness at the fact we could hardly throw or catch the ball due to slipperiness, and running in the mud was basically out of the question without biting the dust, we made it through what felt like four quarters before retiring to a warm lunch at Chipotle. Here's a picture of the 17 or so of us that battled it out despite the conditions and had an absolute blast doing it.

This picture doesn't quite do justice to how soaked and muddy we all were, or to how soaked and muddy the field was, but hopefully it gives you the idea.

It's been such a blast getting to know these students and do fun things with them. More stories soon!

Why would You Ever Choose to Be an RUF Intern?

Curious about what the internship is teaching me and my fellow interns? Wondering why we would ever do this by choice? This is a helpful diagnosis of our sickness: http://www.ruf.org/ruf-blog/why-be-an-ruf-intern/

:)