All of NYC – 140 college campuses and 1.3 million college students. Queens – 7 college campuses (with over 1000 students each) and 86,000 college students. Our current reality – ministries at Queens College and St. John’s University. Our prayer, hope, and goal for this semester – launch and grow 2 more Gospel-Centered Missional Communities at Queens/Long Island campuses.
This coming week, our team is taking a HUGE step of faith to see this goal reached – we are attempting to launch at Stoney Brook University. We have been praying for months, our team took a day last semester to go to Stoney Brook to meet with pastors and potential students and faculty in town, and to learn about the campus, and we have talked about the best way to do it – now, we are trusting the Lord, taking a step of faith, and praying He leads us to solid students who want to reach their campus by leading a Cru ministry and that we find other students who want to know the Lord, grow in their faith, and reach their fellow students by being involved with Cru (not leading).
Next Sunday evening through Tuesday late, late evening, our team will travel to Stoney Brook (over an hour away by car and over 2 by public transportation), spend two nights in a hotel, pass out flyers, get students to fill out surveys, have lots of Gospel conversations, connect with local pastors and faculty, train students, and have an info meeting for interested students. Our prayer is that we would surface 3-5 key students, faculty, or volunteers who are solid in their faith and want to lead the ministry that we can coach from afar and over 5 other students who want to be involved in a Bible study lead by our volunteers, faculty, or student leaders. If we find these student/faculty/volunteer leaders, we would challenge them to spend time praying in the next week for their campus as a group and then meet with us the following week for some more training as well as to see us model how to lead a small group Bible study. Then, we would coach them and challenge them to lead the Bible study by themselves the following week.
Would you pray for this coming week’s launch? This could be an epic God story where we see Him show up in major ways, this could be a major bomb and nothing happens at all, or it could set the stage for something to happen in the future. Either way, we know God is writing this story and we want to be faithful to do our part to see ministries established across Queens so that everyone knows someone who truly follows Jesus.
Would you also pray for LaGuardia Community College? We are doing the beginning steps of connecting with interested faculty and students to get something started there as well, and we need the Lord’s guidance and for Him to move for this to happen.
And lastly, because while we are busy preparing, life goes on – here are a few sweet moments from the kids this week:
Blake – Loving his rain gear and new (well, new to him but hand-me-down) Cars umbrella
Kinsley and Emerson – both girls got to enjoy daddy-daughter dates this past weekend. Emerson got to go with daddy to get her boot off her foot (YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT – Praise the Lord her foot took a huge turn for the better and enough so that they removed the boot – she is walking better but over did it last night because she doesn’t realize its not 100% better yet so pray she doesn’t re-injure it and slows down!) and then to use her Christmas $$ to get her nails done (it costs $5 for her to get her nails painted at the salon and she thinks she is BIG STUFF!) and then to get a donut to celebrate. Kinsley went ice skating with Ed at Bryant Park in the city and then to Chickfila to enjoy cookies and lemonades.
Brynn – while this little monkey started taking a few steps right around 10.5 months old, she is now full-on walking. It is so very weird to see your once-crawling baby now walking around the corner towards you. The best part – she is so proud of herself that she smiles constantly while she is walking and even walks sideways sometimes. The worst part – she is EVEN MORE officially into everything – toilets, toilet papers, trash can, pantry – you name it, she finds it.