The Bruised Reed

     I realized this morning that I never shared how Greek Conference turned out.  I posted about the conference on Feb. 13 as I was heading to Greensboro, North Carolina.
     The time I had there was awesome!!  When I was an undergrad and involved with Sigma Phi Epsilon I never went to Greek Conference so I was very eager to experience it and see what it was all about.  Obviously it was designed for Greek students.  It took place over a weekend and was a place to discuss real-life issues, to investigate what it means to be a Christian, to be challenged and encouraged by other Greek students, and to get practical tools for living in the Greek system and to just have fun with each other.  Students from all over the east coast came.  
     There several students who came that decided to give their lives to Christ.  It was powerful to hear them tell there story and to see the excitement they had for being with so many other people who were believers and Greek.  I had the oppurtunity to help lead a track that focused on social justice and what God has to say about it.   I can’t wait to bring some of my Greek students from ASU with me next year.  I think too often we write off the Greek community from our outreach and see then as too different or too “far gone”.  Which is absolutely not the gospel. Or we are content with the mindset of not knowing how to reach out to that community and never pursue building relationships and continuing to reach out even when it’s hard.

I’m going to add some photos to this post hopefully later today or tomorrow so check back soon to see them.

     Let me just say how great the week was in Richmond. As I said in the previous post, there was 21 students that went. We were gone from Monday to Friday, working with on organization called C.H.A.T (Church Hill Activities & Tutoring). Below are some pictures from the week. We spent the week tutoring kids, playing with the kids, working on the lighthouse (the house that CHAT has all their activities in) to fix it up – painting, landscaping, building railing, more painting, rebuilding piers for front porch.
     The students really connected with the kids and with the people who work at CHAT. We had 4 of the students who got application to intern at CHAT this summer for 10 weeks, and it looks like 2 of them are going to be able to do it. The trip was done very well. There was a great balance between the students getting to see the community and learn about it, spending time with the kids, and doing community work. One of the mornings we went of a prayer/trash pick up walk around Church Hill. We broke into several groups and walked around for about 45 minutes. It was awesome to hear what God did in the midst of that time. Everyone came back with a huge black bag of trash (some with several) and many of the students had opportunities to talk with people from the community and pray specifically with them.
     I really saw the students grow during this week. They saw what it looks like to serve and to live out the faith that we have been talking about all semester long. For many of them this was there first exposer to a service project/mission trip. By the end of the week they were excited to get more involved in the Norfolk (ODU area) community and begin serving there. All in all, I was very pleased with how the week turned out and hope to bring ASU on a service project there next year. Below are a few pictures from the trip. [If you have a facebook account, I put about 160 pictures from the trip on there if you want to check out some more of the week - if you don't have one here is your excuse to sign up for one ]

Samson reading with one of the kids.

The group on a bus tour of Church Hill


painting the fence

working on rebuilding the piers and getting ready to install
the corner column.

So I’m in Church Hill Richmond right now on a service project with 21 of my ODU students. I know I haven’t posted in a little while….sorry. It’s been a busy past month. Buy I wanted everyone to know things are going well. 21 of my students decided to spend their spring break helping out an organization called C.H.A.T (Church Hill Activities & Tutoring). I’ll post more about the trip when I get back to Newport News on Saturday but wanted to let youall know I was still around . Please be praying for us as we are on this trip!!