Good life=good description!

WOW!

This week was the first week of classes for the students here at UNL. What does that mean when you're a FOCUS missionary? It means FALL OUTREACH! Here's a little rundown of what this has entailed:

Thursday and Friday of the week before last we put on evangelization workshops. This was for the student leaders who have been in the bible studies of missionaries or other student leaders in years past, and who are now leading their own studies. Us missionaries gave them some talks and got them off on the right foot for another evangelization-filled year on campus! They also had a lot of prayer time, and ended these sessions really enthused for the year!

Friday night we had all these student leaders over to our house for a cook out. There were about 50 of them...it was intense and awesome! Friday and Saturday night, orientation events hosted by UNL took place. Us missionaries and the student leaders went to these to meet some of the freshmen. Some really great conversations took place, and it will be awesome to see what God has in store for the students that we met there!

Sunday was BIG RED WELCOME! This is when pretty much every organization you can think of tries to get on the radar of all the students at UNL by giving them free stuff (everything from tootsie rolls to condoms...there was a lot of diversity, to put in nicely!). Our philosophy: why should the Catholics miss out on this opportunity? All of us missionaries, as well as the 50+ student leaders, wore t-shirts that said "husker catholic" on them and went around meeting students, giving them icy-pops, and having them fill out raffle tickets that had boxes at the bottom which indicated if you were Catholic and/or interested in getting involved in bible study. After this was over, we plugged all of those who were either of these options into a database and followed up with them by knocking on their door and inviting them to Primetime! Over all, there were probably about 500 students invited. It was quite the operation.

What is Primetime? Well, it is a pretty sweet event that involved some fun videos promoting a party sponsored by FOCUS, as well as some great testimonies from a student and a missionary. And ice cream! About 300 students came, and a lot of them got a lot out of it!

So here we are beginning yet another week at UNL! Aside from the above, I've been spending a lot of time with students, making them pizza and cookies, and talking to them about all sorts of awesome topics! I'll be starting my own bible studies, as will the other missionaries, and I have a group of 7 student leaders that I'll be working closely with for the year as we all seek to spread Christ's love on campus and draw closer to Him through daily prayer and frequenting the sacraments.

This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all that's happened this first week! It's been busy, but SO GOOD! There have been so many times when I'm hanging out with students that my mind has been totally blown away by the fact that God has called me to this and given me this opportunity to spread His love.

Sorry that this is such a shallow and brief description of all that has taken place, but please continue to pray for all of us and I will be more committed to posting on a weekly basis.

God bless!! : )

Lots and lots of corn...

Well, it's official! Nebraska actually exists...who knew?

So far, I've been to a "super" county fair (that's what it was called!) that had a duck race AND a pig race, I've played midwest yard-games, and I've seen multiple signs for "designated snow routes"...I'm definitely not in Hilton Head anymore. And did I mention corn? There's LOTS of corn, too.

But there's definitely much more than the standard stereotypes. UNL is overall a pretty phenomenal place. The Newman Center on campus is awesome and the priests here to serve the students are absolutely incredible. I feel so blest to be where there is such rock-solid spiritual leadership!

The freshmen will be arriving this weekend, and we are doing a lot of prep for their coming to campus! We'll be hosting several events for them, and will also be present at numerous events held by the university. All of our outreaches will be put on with the help of upper classmen who have already become involved with FOCUS in years past and have the desire to pass what they have learned about their Faith onto their peers.

We've also had a lot of time as a team this past week, which has been really great. Without a doubt, I'm serving here with some truly outstanding missionaries, and I know I will be learning SO MUCH from them. God knew that I needed good teachers to help me in this ministry, and in His incredible generosity He has definitely given me some of the best.

Well, there will be a lot more to talk about after this first week of Fall Outreach. PLEASE be praying that God will prepare the hearts of the students we will be meeting!