“We shall feast in the house of Zion”

It’s the time of year when the school year has settled into a routine, the midterms are out, and the coffee shops feel a little more packed with stress. The other weekend 20 of William and Mary’s finest retreated to Lynchburg for a RUF Fall Conference. It was delightful. (Pictures at the end of the post!)

The trip began with everyone from William and Mary being invited to a student’s parents’ home in Lynchburg for lasagna and brownies. My car set out too late to stop for dinner, but the students brought us extra brownies to eat. The weekend was rainy, but we gathered in the cabins, made tea for each other, played board games, played all the songs we know on guitar and ukulele. It was a quiet, unimposing weekend of living together.

On the way home, W&M RUF alumni invited us to eat lunch at their home in Charlottesville. Not every one could stop on the way home, but a few of us did. They had made fresh bread and tomato soup (it was still raining, so this was the ideal meal). A group of about 12 people sat around a table full of food and grace. We didn’t come with anything, we were simply supplied a war fire and meal.

We sung a song that weekend at Fall Conference with the chorus: “We will feast in the house of Zion. We will sing with our hearts restored. He has done great things we will say together. We will feast and weep no more.” I couldn’t shake this chorus while we sat around the table with new and old friends. What a great thing it is to celebrate the already but not yet. The Feast of Zion.

“Be Thou my Vision”

If I have been out of touch, it is because the school year is in full swing, and I have barely enough energy to get ready for bed at 11 o’clock at night.

When I wasn’t at RUF events, I was meeting with students one on one. It has been great reconnecting with students from last year. I am bursting with excitement for the whole RUF ministry team’s enthusiasm for spontaneity and friendship. In this first week alone, we have had trips to the beach, groups gather to watch movies, and lots of snacks. I have been praying for this spirit of genuine friendship this year, and I hope this pattern continues.

This week has not been without its struggles. I mentioned in my email that a student told me this week that she has fallen deep into disbelief over the summer. I find myself suddenly face to face with the reality that people are all on their own journey, and I am only joining them for a short sprint. This is not unimportant, but I am also not necessary. I am here to love, not radically change someone’s life. Even if that does happen, I am not the point of the change.

The busyness of the semester lends to loneliness when my day off comes along. It is jarring to spend every hour of a week with others and then to have a whole day by myself to rest. This sounds great, and it is, but it can also encourage loneliness and self-pity. Learning to deal with my time off has been a struggle, and I am trying to develop good habits to encourage rest.

It is amazing to see God at work, even when he seems to be working in the opposite direction, which should make me consider how I am viewing my life and work. Am I seeking to feel fulfilled by how many people I interact with, or how many people hug me, or how many happy photos I can get, or how tired I am by the time I crawl into bed? When I use these as criteria, I find myself shaken when a student says they don’t believe, or they themselves feel hopeless, or they don’t know what they are doing in life. What would my life look like (what would my day of rest look like) if I secured my hope and joy in my hope for tomorrow, the already but not yet, instead of the reception I get here and now?

“Let us Love and Sing and Wonder”

Year One of my internship has ended. I’ve spent my summer visiting friends and preparing for the coming year. I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the past year. I wanted to share with you all an over view of how far we have come. This is a lengthy post, but it is mostly photos.

Fall Retreat was an event in September. It was a very early event, and I didn’t know the students as well. It’s amazing to see where our lives have led us. Some students graduated, and many of us have developed strong friendships.

Our group is very relaxed. We mostly sat on the grass and played music together. Above: My co-intern Jacob and some freshmen at Fall Retreat
Some girls at Fall Retreat with our fearless Superhero, Ben (Campus Minister)Freshmen at our Halloween Party!

Above: Catherine (standing) led a study on the Old Testament during the year.

 

Above: Arts Mambo: an event that draws creative people from all over campus to share and be heard.

Easter Feaster: Some students were invited to another student’s home to celebrate Easter and eat a nice dinner. Again, we mostly sat and chatted on the lawn.

Over the Year I have loved getting to know the students and sharing in fun and difficult times. Meet Ben Robertson, our fearless leader. He has served at William and Mary for over nine years. His two sons are also in this photo, but they don’t glow like their dad.

Meet Jacob and Lindsey. Jacob is my co-intern at William and Mary. He and Lindsey moved here the same time as I did. We’ve enjoyed learned the ins and outs of this campus together.

Meet Catherine. I worked along side her this year. She was the intern before me, and she went on staff this year. I have personally learned so much working and living with her. She is going on to seminary this coming year.

I just returned from July staff training. It was a lovely time to be reminded of what we are doing. What we are striving for. Being called to pursue others in love for friendship and hope. For the Life of the World (An excellent video series. If you have three minutes, look it up an watch a short video).The Intern class of 2014-16.

I am still in need of about $12,000 (That’s 20 people giving $50/mon). If you can help this ministry at all, please click here. 

“I need Thee Every Hour”

I feel that right now my focus is on getting students to connect with one another. We have a big event every semester called “Arts Mambo.” There may even be another blog post about last semester’s Mambo. But each Mambo is different and this one will include more pictures.

Here is my one picture from Arts Mambo. Arts Mambo is an evening of sharing a thing. RUF students invite their friends and everyone learns about each other by the sharing of creative outlets. There is poetry, short stories, song (sung and played), art, and anything else you want to bring. This is Ben (our campus minister) playing and singing for us. As you can see we were all quite impressed and delighted.

Arts Mambo is always a time to share struggles with one another, no matter where you are in life. Some people expressed deep struggle through their poems or songs, others peacefully serenaded us, uniting us in an evening of simply being with one another.

Here are two freshmen and a senior at Large Group. They all realized they were wearing the same shade of aqua in honor of spring and decided to commemorate the moment. Ben has been preaching on Questions God asks us in the Bible. It’s been a very convicting series with a lot of great feed back.

These pictures were in the email update, but I wanted to have them included in the blog so I would have a comprehensive over view of the internship at the end in this blog.

It’s a short blog, but things are just plugging along for now. It’s truly the daily grind of meeting with students and continuing to invite them to events and hoping RUF is making a lasting impression in students’ lives. And in the daily grind, it is often easy to lose sight of why we are here, and I realize I rely less and less on God’s Spirit being at work than my own schedule.

“By Thy Mercy”

This past week, Ben (our CM) was out of town so Large Group took a different form. Five of us got up between songs and shared what we had been learning in the past year or couple months. It varied from a full testimony to the minutest of realizations about God. The following are notes (expanded for readability) that I used for my talk.

This is what I’ve been learning my whole life but especially the past couple weeks.

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I grew up in the Church.

I get bored of saying that. I don’t have an exciting testimony. I haven’t turned from some egregiously sinful lifestyle or been liberated from a terrible home life. I have parents who love me, took me to church, sent me to Christian schools, so I was saturated in the Gospel. 

And then I read Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill. I would describe this book as a personal memoir by Wesley Hill in which he explains his life as a Homosexual and as a Christian and how he has struggled to reconcile the two. He has and continues to walk the line between embracing who he is and following what he believes Jesus says is the most fulfilling lifestyle for him. In reading this book I discovered that Wesley Hill knew to a much greater extent than I ever had (and maybe ever will) what it meant to take up his cross daily and follow Jesus. Literally, I had no idea what that meant for me. I work in ministry. That means I wake up ready to work for God. What is my cross?

 

So my first realization was this- I think I’m a pretty good person. Jesus barely had to die for me. In fact, he was only “mostly dead” for me. What do I do wrong? I get upset sometimes when I don’t get my way, or I don’t get credit for something I did, when people don’t know who I am.  And then I read Galatians 6:19-21 “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

 

Notice murder isn’t listed this time. Nor even homosexuality. It’s not to say that murder or homosexuality isn’t addressed elsewhere explicitly, but for now, right here, God isn’t addressing those things. Listed here are things I do. Reading Washed and Waiting made me realize, I am jealous almost constantly. If I don’t get my way, I have a flash of anger, and then it may be gone, but that is fits of anger. How often do I compare my life to another’s and then resent that it is not mine? Often. 

 

Then I became overwhelmed by how many of these things I am. I sin. I sin in a way that grieves God and isolates me from fellowship. These aren’t the fruit of the Spirit. 

 

What I am trying to learn now is how to live with these sins or temptations. And Wesley Hill knows what it’s like very vividly to resist temptation day after day. I started reading his book and replacing his temptation with my own temptations to be angry, or jealous, or simply discontent. My cross began to loom over me.

Let me quote a paragraph from pg. 118 [with my translation as to how it applies to me].

For we homosexual Christians [or me, a struggling sinner], committing ourselves to the church and looking for the presence of the risen Jesus in the human faces of our fellow believers, pursuing intimacy with this community, refusing to hold friends of the same sex [or friends I envy] at arm’s length in the midst of our confusing loneliness, doesn’t always –or ever often– remove or lessen the loneliness; it merely changes the battleground. Instead of fighting loneliness alone in a car on an empty driveway or an apartment bedroom on Easter nights, we’re on the phone with a fellow Christian. Instead of staring at a TV screen late into the night [no translation needed], we’re at a church potluck, helping our married friends keep an eye on their kids. In the end, as the Indigo Girls lyric has it, “We’re better off for all that we let in” –including all the pain we let into our lives when we open up our souls to the fellowship of the church. That pain is better than the pain of isolation.

I think sin isolates us. Literally sometimes. So right now, I have a friend I text every time I am tempted to feel certain ways, and it’s awkward and embracing. But that’s the stuff that if it goes unchecked, can do a lot of damage by making me think, I don’t really sin. Therefore, Jesus isn’t that great. But I am trying to change my battle ground to one where I can see my temptations, tell a friend, sit through it, and realize just how important and gracious my salvation is. 

“I Sought the Lord”

I have been amazed to see God at work through RUF. Even into November we still have new students showing up to Large Group and Small Groups. In particular I would like to tell you about a girl (let’s call her Sally), who showed up at Large Group in October. She grew up outside of the US and said that she came along because she saw a girl in her dorm reading a Bible. She had never seen one before! The girl invited her to RUF Large Group.

A week later I was on campus on my day off to drop some things off at the library. I walked by a girl on a sidewalk who looked at me a few times and, of course, just as we passed I realized it was Sally- though I couldn’t remember exactly how to pronounce her name, and she was gone. Trying not to kick myself, I dropped off the movies at the library and started walking back to my car, and she is walking towards me again! I took a stab at her name, and she remembered me, and we exchanged numbers.

At the next Large Group I sat by her and in the middle of Ben’s sermon she turns to me and asks, “Who wrote John?” I explained that the apostle John did. Then she asks if John wrote the whole Bible! I explained that the Bible was written over a long period of time and by many different people, some before and some after Jesus. She argued that she thought the Bible was about Jesus, so how could there be stories before him. I shared with her that everything in the Bible points to Jesus, whether before or after he was here. This was eye-opening for me. I had never shared with someone the basics of the Bible. I either assumed they knew the Sunday school answers or they didn’t care.

This week I ran into her, and she started telling me about how she was struggling to forgive people in her life. She felt compelled to, but she was still angry at them. She had to return to studying so we made plans to meet the next day and go over some scripture that talked about prayer and forgiveness. We met for lunch at the cafeteria, and she told me about her life growing up and what she was looking for in her own life. She believes in God, but hardly knows anything about Him, and so she is eager to come to RUF and learn. I shared with her from Ephesians 2 and 1 John 3 to explain the gap between us and God, and how Jesus came to save us because of his great love for us.

I learned so much from meeting with Sally.

1. Don’t assume people believe what I believe or know what I know.

2. I am not able to convince someone of the Bible. God has to be working in their hearts first. I can see that Sally is open to learning, and her willingness to accept what the Bible says must be from God. I am so glad she is seeking!

3. It doesn’t make sense. As Sally pointed out, it doesn’t make sense to forgive someone who is mean to you and is not sorry. It goes against our nature. We need God’s perfected love to do this.

“Just as I am”

An event has become tradition at William and Mary called “Arts Mambo.” It was begun by a past intern for RUF, but it is open to all students and those in the community. Mambo means “things” in Swahili. It was an evening full of people showing their skills or hobbies to the group. Some played guitar or banjo. Others showed calligraphy or paintings. Others read stories or poems. This semester was the largest Arts Mambo yet. We met in a home of a couple who attend the local PCA church and are involved with RUF. While learning about what students liked to do, many students opened up about struggles with mental health through their sharing of skills. It created a safe environment to be open and honest about life, doubts, and struggles. People truly came just as they were and were loved through it. Arts Mambo is not a “Christian” event. No message is given, not expectation is held. It was a time to build friendships throughout the campus. It was a time to enjoy talents and learn about each other.

I feel that doing this internship has made me look more closely at myself. My struggles, my fears, and my joys. Sharing these parts of life has helped me to grow and love more. We are even told to share in these things in the Bible. I had the opportunity to be among my intern-peers the other week at training. We had a half week of training in Atlanta where all the interns received teaching and shared highs and lows. We broke into our prayer groups and shared stories of seeing God at work and mourning together over the sad stories. This week of training underscored the importance of being still and reconciling the events of the day, week, or month, with the truth of the Gospel. I left training feeing restored because of the honesty I could share with friends and God. There is very little I can control so it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But I can go before God just as I am with the weight of the day and give it over to him.

“How Firm a Foundation”

It has been one month, give or take.

What do I do? I sit on campus and talk with students as they also come to the coffee shop for coffee, or sometimes strangers make conversation with me!

Over the course of this month I have been meeting with freshmen girls who have ever shown their face at an RUF event. I get coffee with them at 8 AM before their class. I walk with them through Downtown/Colonial Williamsburg/ the oldest part of town where people wear dresses and petticoats and tip their hats at you when you walk by. We go get chocolate, and I learn about their family, their expectations for college, and which pets they miss from home. Sometimes, on special occasions, we go to Target.

It’s been terrifying and exciting. I basically jump into this world of William and Mary and act like I’ve been there all along, no fear, all confidence. Then I invite other people who don’t know what is going on to have an adventure with me. And become fast friends. Looking at it like that is overwhelming, and why I dreamed that I bought a one way ticket back to San Antonio to wander around my Alma Mater for the weekend to revisit fond memories and familiar faces.

What I have been learning this month is that people are all unique and circumstances don’t matter. One minute I am having coffee with a student who is out right not a Christian but he comes to a Bible study I also attend. I was reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together when he came across me, and I was so excited about it that he asked me to read a sentence from it. I was taken-aback. So I read this sentence: “Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule.” He promptly responds, “That’s kind of a f*cked up thing to say.” I had to reorient my mind to realize people who are Christian think fundamentally different than those who are not. What is insulting to the world’s ears, can be enlightening and comforting to my ears. This world is not all there is, thank God.

I’ve met with a girl who, on our first coffee date, started crying and said she had no idea how she was going to handle everything this semester, but she is a new Christian and desperately wants to be involved. She is so busy, she is lucky if she can attend any RUF event any given week, so I do work with her Tuesday mornings at the coffee shop.

You could get whiplash doing this job. And this doesn’t account for how I’m feeling any given day. If I got my dishes washed, or if I have a clean towel, or if I’ve had a relaxing day off, doesn’t matter. I’m jumping in the deep end. The best part is that I have the best encounters with students when I feel like I just want to go home and I pray that the student cancels. When I am at my most frantic or stressed, that’s when God can use me to simply listen better, to ask more interesting questions, to genuinely laugh. When I am shaken, He is the firm foundation I can stand on. The trick is learning to realize that when I feel prepared and energize.

“Isaiah 43”

It’s been a long week. To start off, exactly a week ago (Tuesday 19 August) I received an email saying I had reached 85% of my fundraising goals. 

Thank you. 

That is literally all gifts given of other people, you, to this ministry at William and Mary. I couldn’t raise that money alone. I needed God’s blessing and your support. What did I do to deserve it? I made a few (or many) awkward phone calls. Truly, not out of my own strength.

I hit the road the same day. The trip took me until Friday. I was able to stop each night and visit with friends along the way. 

Thank you.

To each friend I saw, you made my trip a joy and you put a roof over my head and even a mattress under my head. 

I am moved into my new home here in Williamsburg. I live very close to campus, and in this weather, I look forward to walking many days of the year to campus. Once I arrived, I hit the ground running. I saw my family briefly the first night and the next day I moved in, had lunch with the RUF campus minister (Ben Robertson) and his family (Dawn and four children). After walking a stretch of the campus past the Sunken Gardens and the newly excavated old brew-house, I headed out to my co-intern’s (Jacob Roberts and his wife, Lindsey) home on a farm. They showed me where to buy bed sheets and food, and then fed me dinner. I am excited to work along side them both and become closer friends. 

Sunday I attended the church where many RUF students attend during the year, and met many regulars at a church picnic that evening. 

Monday I finally met students on Ministry Team (Students committed to helping RUF run and inviting new people into the group). We spent the day at Ben’s home, chatting and getting to know one another (or at least, I memorized and practiced everyone’s names), meditating on a scripture passage, a poem, and spending time in prayer. 

I was uplifted by the prayers I heard being volunteered during an open prayer time. I was frankly amazed by each students’ care in praying: using their own words, praying for similar things, praying for freshmen, praying for themselves and others on the team. Prayer today was specifically needed for the campus. Only this morning, days after move-in, days before classes start, a student committed suicide. 

Sadly, this is not uncommon on the campus of William and Mary. I do not think it has ever happened so early in a semester, and I fear it won’t be the last one I hear of in my time here. This campus is small, about 6,000 students. I don’t know what makes these students particularly susceptible to suicide. I hardly know how to comment on the situation other than, God has everyone on this campus here for a reason. We prayed today that the ministries, counselors, and professors would find the words to comfort and guide the students who new this young man, or who grapple with the same temptation. I ask that you pray for those who knew Peter, his family and friends, to be comforted. Pray for me and Jacob and all who encounter students that are angry or sad or burdened by this news. Truly, God is needed here. His unbelievable words of “Do not fear- I am the Lord your God” throughout the Bible are ones we all need to embrace- and GET to embrace. 

“Trust and Obey”

This is a short update on MOVING.

I am hoping to move to Virginia this week. Actually, I was hoping tomorrow. I am happy to say I have a road trip plan that will get me to Virginia on Saturday and see a couple friends along the way. But there are a few details standing in the way.

1. I need to raise $5,251 in order to reach 85% (the amount I need to be allowed to move and start working on campus with college students). This can be achieved by 8 people pledging $50 a month. Or 4 people pledging $100 a month. Or one time donations. It’s really what ever you feel led to give. Every penny helps. It really does.

2. My car is in the shop. I am told it could be done Wednesday or Thursday. Please pray it is completed sooner rather then later and well.

Thank you for all of your help, through donations, prayers, and conversation. I need a little more of a push to get to William and Mary. Please consider helping!