Love your enemies...

I have to admit, sometimes the United States and we as it's citizens are jerks. If you don't think we're jerks, especially to poor nations, you should check out our history. This morning when I saw the news about the earthquake in Iran I was worried that the U.S. would be stingy with aid due to the current tension between the two nations (and many others). Hope has been momentarily restored since I found this article. We'll wait and see what happens.

Hooray for this guy!

If you haven't heard this is an amazing story. Abdur Rahman, a afghan Christian, was jailed this month for his faith. According to the law he was supposed to be executed. He got out of the sentence thanks to an insanity plea and was free to go. Free to go in a country that knew he was a Christian and would target him for violence. Thankfully Italy granted him asylum. Yay! To read the full story click here.

Moleskine

See how I used suspense and confusion to draw you into reading what the posting entitled "Moleskine" was about. You probably would've read it anyway.

Anyway. I now have a Moleskine Journal. It's exciting. I've always noticed them but always thought it was a little weird to buy one since I already keep a journal. During the choir trip Nate Prior and I were hanging out at Borders and I showed him the Moleskines. I convinced him that since he is constantly spewing creativity and hilarity out of his mouth (and surely much is left unsaid in his brain) that he should have a pocket-sized journal to write it down in. Nate didn't have his wallet but planned to get one when he went home. He ended up getting a 3 pack and giving me one. Go Moleskines! I hope to fill mine up with sketches, ponderings, poetry attempts, quotes, and whatever else happens to come out. Yay!

Spring Break: May I have another?

Spring Break. It was fun. I hung out with good friends. I could've used some more lazy/alone time. I want another one. Choir tour went great, except for getting snowed out of our last performance. The Nate Prior and I entertained ourselves with episodes of The Office, Saved by the Bell, and Comedy Central Presents-Demetri Martin. We also doodled a lot.

My friend Ellen stayed with my family the second half of Spring Break. It was great to have some quality time with my best friend, especially with her being in Chicago this summer. Bummer.

Let me relay the rest of my spring break through a photo montage, if you will.


Lesson 1: Don't touch the deer!

Lesson 2: 'Hey Arnold' tattoos are studly and intimidating to others

Lesson 3: Hanging our in various churches is awesome. Example-Generic Bible Man (seen here)








Lesson 4: Don't make Mark Sievert mad.

Spring Break!

Hey, how'd it get to be Friday?

No complaints here. Friday means spring break. My spring break will be 60% choir tour and 40% time at home. I'm going to be leaving in about an hour on our choir tour to western KS and eastern Co. I'm looking forward to hanging out with my good buddies. Adventures await! I'm more excited than I was before. That was because I was peeved that spring break was going to be taken over by choir tour and not by laziness. The Nate Prior will be bringing his iBook, complete with a full, and dare I say kickin' awesome, music library and some really good movies (Monty python and The Batman movie, old-school style). Cayla Friedli and I are bus buddies, Woot!!! Erin, Molly, and I will be staying in the people's homes together. Oh, and don't forget general bus craziness/crankiness, no trip would be complete without it.

I'll give you the highlights when I return home.
Have a great Spring Break. And when I say great I mean full of lazy and not alcohol. Just a tip.

What's happenin'?

I'm eating cheez-its right now delicious. The best part is licking the cheese off of my fingers.
I really don't hve anything substatial to write about. Though there has been a lot going on in My life it isn't blog material. Let's just say it's a very good thing that spring break starts Friday. Very, very good.
I guess I'll go do homework now.

The 48: Update

Here is the update on the 48 hours of prayer that I promised.
I would like to start off this post by saying WOW! God is AMAZING!!! This shall set the tone for the rest of my post.
Prayer started Tuesday night at 8pm. We did last minute set up a few hours prior and worked out some last minute kinks. We were able to use Heritage Hall in Cooper (the coolest, oldest building on campus), which is the original Chapel. The prayer room felt cozy right away, complete with an art center for drawing praise,prayer, and scripture, poster board to write prayers and poster board to write praises, post-its to write thoughts about whatever(some really profound and personal stuff usually) to stick to tables, windows, and walls, and plenty of sprawl space.
The model of combined prayer and worship worked well. It helped sets flow, people engage in worship and prayer, and took the stress off of just praying on the mic or worship leading for an hour.
Many hearts were changed, awakened, and healed, evident in the remnants of prayers and the praise reports left around the room.
My favorite praise reports were:
" I met Jesus! I met Jesus!" and "God has healed me of my eating disorder."
My favorite post-it was:
"I don't want to leave this place. It's the only place my heart is at peace."

As we came to Thursday Jen (my R.D. and the one who found out about campus transformation) and I were both hearing sentiments of people wanting the prayer to never stop. Many who came loved that there was a place devoted to pray night and day, and that it was a safe place to grow in their relationship with God.
Prayer was supposed to be over at 8pm that night. We even had a group come in to play for us. IT HAS NOT STOPPED!!!
As we came to a 'close' last night each of us felt that God wanted to make 24-7 prayer permanent on campus. We're not sure where it will continue, how we will pay for it, and if we have enough people, but we are hoping in and praying to God. If He wants it to happen it will. The campus has changed so much already. There is unity where there once was division. The had been healing in broken relationships. People are taking notice of a faith that is not forced, but powered by willingness and love of prayer.
It still seems so surreal to me. God is AMAZING!!!!

What is also exciting is what is happening when people leave the prayer room. My good friend Paul Son, a senior who is from Korea, was up praying all night and felt that God wanted him to preach to the campus. Paul was unsure because he doesn't like to be boastful or to offend people. He felt like God wanted him to preach Friday in the Cafeteria at lunch. Paul was hesitant,but mostly confused about why God would use him. God started to reveal to Paul how He feels about people on campus and why He sent Jesus to the cross. This is a short paraphrase of what Paul said,

"I asked God, "But Lord, you loved your son so much. Why did you let him suffer? Why didn't you stop it?!" And God responded to me, "For you. For you."

Paul was faithful and stood up in the middle of caf at lunch today (with many prayer warriors praying for him), Bible in hand, and relayed the things God had put on his heart; that God so wanted these people, his sons and daughters, to be with Him that he sent his son. The whole caf was silent and motionless as Paul spoke and wept in front of them. After he spoke he asked those who wanted to take a stand for Christ, to claim Him as their God. In one swift moment everyone in earshot stood up and bowed their heads. Paul prayed and many more gathered around him. "Amen", Paul prayed, and everyone sat back down, wiped their tears, and finished their lunch. It was so surreal. It's probably one of the most powerful things I've ever seen in my life. I feel as if I have witnessed a miracle.

Please keep praying for our campus as we continue in day and night prayer. Pray for us who are organizing it that we may follow God's lead as He established 24-7 prayer in His way and His time on campus. Pray for strength, energy, and healing. At the 'end' of prayer last night we found that our cry was mostly for more. Please join us in asking God for more of His presence, provision, blessing, healing, Spirit, and love on campus!
Thank you!!!

And so it begins...The 48

48 hour prayer starts tonight at 8pm!!! I'm very excited to see what God will do.
The planning is complete.
The reminder e-mails have been set.
The worship and prayer sets are filled.
The set up in the room will be done later today.
Now all we need is people and the Holy Spirit!!!

I'm worship leading tonight from 9-10pm. I think it will go really well. I'm sure I'll get a little nervous, but that leaves more room for God to do things and not me.
I probably won't write anything until Friday, but expect a full report.

Yay!!!

The 48

Here's some actual good news from our campus: 24/7 prayer is coming to town!
We've signed up for 48 hours with campus transformation , a ministry that is trying to cover the whole spring semester in 24/7 prayer. So far 50 different schools have signed up for slots. For the past 2 weeks myself and a small group of others, initiated by my Resident Director, have been, meeting, planning, training, and praying. We've divided up the 48 hours into 1 hour slots and want to have a worship leader and prayer leader in those slots. Our sign up sheet is almost full! It's amazing to see this come to fruition!
I mostly excited to see what will happen on our campus! I feel like God wants to initiate a lot of change in peoples hearts and make us aware of His plans for our nation. My prayer is that God will impact our hearts so that we may go and impact others, increased intimacy with God, that hunger to be in relationship with God would be increased, that those who don't know Christ or don't know him well would see him as he really is, and for unity among the whole campus; students, faculty and staff, and the community.
Please pray for God to break in on Sterling College! He loves prayer!

Twelth Night

Yes, I am talking about Shakespeare. It's not that I'm a huge Shakespeare dweeb/scholar, but I just went to see our school production of 12th night. It was amazing!!! Twelth Night is my favorite Shakespeare play, out of the few that I've read, and the cast for this show was amazing. All of my senior friends (who are the best of the best) and all of my freshman friend (who are also amazingly talented) and pretty much all of my other friends (also amazing) were in it.
It was great to see Shakespeare on stage as it should be, instead of just reading it. It amazed me to see the characters I had imagined in my mind suddenly on stage. I highly recommend this play, that is if you are in or around Sterling College and can come to it.

Congrats Cast, You are all amazing!!!

Ash Wednesday

If you know anything about lent you might know today is ash Wednesday. Pretty exciting. Most people give something up to see what happens or out of obligation. I've given up caffeine in past years and have discovered a lot about depending on things other than God and other valuable lessons.
This year I'm doing Lent a little bit different. Several different ministries have set apart 40 days for prayer and fasting to pray for the conflict in the middle-east, revival in the church (especially among youth, and righteousness and justice in our government. The fast starts today and ends on good Friday, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the Azuza street revival. I'm excited to see what will happen. They're hoping to get at least 1 million people involved in this fast. If you are interested, curious, or want more info you can check out the facedown 40 website.

Today was an interesting day. In Chapel we had a time of prayer as a campus. It was pretty powerful. The head Chaplin of the Religion and Philosophy department's wife, Mrs. Lederle, spoke about the Lord wanting us to "rend our hearts, not our garments." (Joel 2:13). It was a timely message that our campus desperately needed to hear. Many students stayed for another hour(thus skipping class) after chapel was dismissed to weep and pray. I think that we are just seeing the beginning of what God will do on our campus. It's going to be GLORIOUS!!!!