Destination: Spring Field Missouri! (GYU 10)

We made it! Our team in back together, and this time at work in MISSOURI!! We all got in worn out from travelling in last Tuesday. Danny and Jordan (two of the Cru staffers whose team of ten years we get to join in on here!) picked us up from the airport and brought us back to the apartments they'd arranged for us. Back when Jill first mentioned that "her baby" (our gap team) needed somewhere to go, Danny immediately wrote her back begging if their team in Missouri could have us. :) Ever since, they've been sooo excited to have us join them here! There's 9 already on their team here. They've all staffed and worked with Cru college ministry for up to 10 years all together here. They're like family to one another, and I can't even express how blessed and welcomed they've made us feel into their little family. Our apartments are wonderful. Thanks to Brandon (another on the team here) we have 3 this time, all a door down or less from each other. Dani and I were realizing that though our new apartment here is similar in size to us girls' apartment in Montana, it just feels so much bigger since it's just the two of us living in it right now. :) Brandon did such a great job finding something for us. By the time we pulled up in front of the complex, Tina, Rachel, and Brandon were there too to meet us and welcome us home! I was so touched by the generosity and kindness, and just the way they interact with each other and love each other so well as a team. After a quick sleep, the next morning, all of us gappers (As we call our team of 6) were picked up by the Missouri Cru team here to go to Danny's house for a team welcome party! That was sooo incredible. It's becoming clearer and clearer just how perfectly God has arranged this next leg of the journey for us. He took every detail into account and arranged something that couldn't be more perfect for us. He's so good. I can't believe we actually get to come and work along side this team here and be treated as equally a part of them all. :) Even right after the welcome party, all of them and all 6 of us, drove over to two of the three campuses we'll be doing all our work on here. And jumped right in on sharing with students! Each of us gappers got paired with someone on their team to observe the first time...and then we were asked to lead it ourselves with the next student we approached! It was honestly so incredible though. Through the way their team does ministry - the way they're all so motivated and passionate about not only leading people to Christ, but then, as the next step, leading them to lead others to Christ has been inspiring! It's all right there in the Great Commission, but somehow I'd never really thought about it as much before. How it's really supposed to be so central to what we do. Seeing them teach students that have accepted Christ, before anything else, to know how to tell others kinda brought that home for me. Danny especially (the team leader) is really passionate about it, and I got to paired with him that first day with "my" Dani too. :) After he ran us through it the first time and helped us out the second, I ended up walking past one student sitting alone and really feeling lead to approach him. I didn't feel ready to do it alone, but Dani and Danny (lol) were both gone, and I knew what God was asking me to do. So...I went up and asked if he would be willing to do our survey. He was. And more than that, he was really interested in hearing all about God and Who He is to me. He wanted to hear me pray. He wanted to know why I'd come to talk to him. He wanted to talk again the next day at a coffee shop too! I don't know. It's just been sooo cool to see God here working for us. I feel like I've had more incredible spiritual conversations with students here already in the first 3 days than in the whole time in Montana. Here with our new extended team (15 of us) we work SO hard when we're working hard. But we also rest hard when we rest. We pair up and work on the three campuses we reach 10am - 4pm Monday - Thursday. But then weekends are off and evenings, and are meant to be used to rest, even with half days with the Lord, and reflection times worked into our schedule. We have team meetings Monday mornings at one of their houses, and team bonding (Bible study, prayer, testimonies) Friday mornings. We have optional fun times together as one big team Wednesday evenings. There's a couple of Bible studies on campus different week nights we may get to be a part of, but since covid, and being forced to change how they've done things on campuses with small groups and club meetings and stuff, the team here has discovered that they actually get a lot more students actually sharing their own faith this way now. So, really with the way we're doing it here, we spend half our ministry time on campus approaching students and seeking to have spiritual conversations with them, but the other half of our time we get to approach students to ask them (if they're also passionate about God and reaching their campus for Christ) to be trained right there to be able to start movements in their own fraternity and sorority houses, classes, and friend groups. They've seen SO much success with this approach, and also just get to experience the joy of getting to see their own students reach out to each other and join movements like that. :) It's been incredible to get to see how it all works here, and just how powerfully God is moving. So really, to sum all that up, the short story would be, God is good. He is working here. And He has so clearly arranged so perfectly where he wanted our little gappers team this second semester. I'm so overwhelmed by His goodness right now. And...looking forward to hopefully getting to go to Ivory Coast with this team here come summer too!!! (Yeah! Pray we can and borders stay open!) I'll try and get pictures for the upcoming posts. I don't really have any yet since we've only been here since Tuesday night. God bless you all, and I'll keep you posted on His story unfolding here in Springfield Missouri! --