Spring Break wk 1 DONE!

While some kids head to the beach to party and sit on the beach for their Spring Breaks, over 100 students decided to come to NYC to be missionaries for the week as they reached out to other college students. NYC staff hosted/will host college students from all around the country for two weeks and the first week is done!!

This first week was really fun for us as we had a lot of students from the South, including Ben (on the left in the glasses below) and Matthew (right behind Ed). Ben, who I have mentioned before, goes to University of South Carolina, is the brother of my brother’s college roommate, and has been in NYC for the past two summers on summer mission with us. He brought along 5 other guys from USC with him, and one of those guys was Matthew. Matthew is from my hometown, his mom was a teacher of mine in high school, and his parents are ministry partners with us. It was so fun that they were in NYC doing ministry with us, but even more fun that they got to go on campus with Ed almost every day AND got to come eat breakfast at our house one morning. It was also nice to have good, Southern people around 😉

Unfortunately, they did run into opposition from the administration at St. Johns, which we are continuing to experience, so please pray with us that our students at SJU are able to meet with the powers that be and smooth things over, and that we are allowed to remain on campus at SJU.

Over the week, students were trained in effectively sharing their faith, they attended a weekly meeting at NYU, they went on campus 3 days to share their faith, they partnered with other Cru ministries in the city to be exposed to and to serve with them, and they had free time to explore the city. They even saw 11 students place their faith in Christ!  Hopefully, local staff will be able to followup with discipleship with these students and get them plugged into a local church and a local body of believers.

We also had another big happening in our family this week – this man turned 36!  So thankful for him and his willingness to serve and provide for our family. We get to go cheer him on in a half-marathon in the city tomorrow morning.

I also attended a workshop about testing anxiety at Kinsley’s school. NYC is intense with their education and testing. With so many high achieving parents and surrounded by cultures that are really focused on grades and achievement, kids here are driven to succeed and there is lots of pressure to do well. Starting in 3rd grade, students undergo state testing in Language Arts and Math and the school’s ranking is determined by how well students do (aka lots of pressure to do well from the school as well!) and then in 4th grade, the scores students can determine where they go to middle school. Getting into high school here is like college application time, with schools sometimes requiring interviews, essays, portfolios, try outs, etc. Needless to say, poor Kinsley, our over achiever, type A, worrier, has already been stressing about the test since its pretty much all she has heard about all year. So, I went to this workshop hoping it would help me to help her better. It was good and I walked away with quite a few takeaways. Thankful for things like this that help us to help our kids, especially when anxiety and stress are so prevalent in our young people.

On to week 2 of Spring Break…..

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