That’s me with my friend (and Stanford grad student) Hilary last weekend at a tea party in Madera. Madera Ranchos Assembly of God, one of my favorite supporting churches, had their annual community ladies event and invited me to be the guest speaker. Hilary, one of our Chi Alpha students, came with me and we had such a good time with all those wonderful women. We stayed through the weekend and I led worship and preached Sunday morning and night at MRAG.
Back on campus, we’re halfway through spring quarter. Graduation is just six weeks away-hard to beleive it’s that time again! We’ve just elected our Chi Alpha officers for next year and we’ve got a fantastic group of leaders. I’m continuing to lead a Thursday night dinner group called Food For Thought, where we’re discussing important figures in church history over meals together. And our Wednesday night meetings continue to grow as we’ve begun a new sermon series on the book of Ecclesiastes. It’s a fun season of serving God on campus.
Life Together is a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an Christian theologlian and activist in the Nazi resistance, which I am studying with some of my Chi Alpha gals this quarter. It also feels like the theme of these last weeks.
Right after spring quarter began last week, we had a visit from Ria, a Stanford Chi Alpha alum from the island of Trinidad who’s completing the Ford Fellowship in New York City before finishing her Master’s at Cambridge next year. As if that wasn’t enough–she’s also getting married this summer in Ghana! Paula, my co-missionary, and I hosted a bridal shower for her at my home. It was a special time of honoring her and gathering together.
In addition to the shower, we also had two birthdays to celebrate on campus last week, which we did with balloons and cake and lots of laughter. Add to that a breakfast meeting with the worship team, an evening dinner discussion about the book of Acts, a mid-week service celebrating the Holy Spirit, a girl’s Bible study on the book of Exodus and all of the “together-ness” starts to add up.
But that’s not an accident! In fact, I will be speaking at Chi Alpha tomorrow night on why real community is so important. After the Day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, chapter 2, this incredible thing happens:
42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
And still today we’re challenged by the way those early beleivers in Jesus lived life together.
I close with an African proverb which gives me pause, in the midst of my everyday busy-ness:
If you want to go fast, travel alone, but if you want to go far, stick together.
Before I preached last Wednesday, I invited students to share testimonies. One gal shared of God’s faithfulness, complete with the following quote–a modern day psalm if I ever heard one.
“I don’t know why I was so worried. It’s not like God has ever taken me to a place of suckiness and said “Peace out!”.
It’s dead week on campus. That’s another way of describing the week before finals. Hard to beleive another quarter has come and gone. We marked the occasion at our weekly pb&j picnic this afternoon, where we also said goodbye to students who’ll be studying abroad next quarter. You’ll notice a special face in the back row next to me–that’s my mom!
She’s down visiting from Alaska. We’ve been having a lot of fun together. I spoke at a conference last weekend and used her as my “visual aid”. Then we went and stayed with some special family friends. This week she’s been hanging out close to campus, even coming to Chi Alpha this week where I preached on the significance of Palm Sunday.
This weekend I will be sharing at Adobe Christian Center, one of my supporting churches in Petaluma. We’re headed up tomorrow to sightsee and spend some quality time before she flies out on Tuesday.
Though my mom is a very welcome visitor, my downstairs neighbors and co-missionaries at Stanford, Glen & Paula Davis, have been having some unwelcome visitations lately, in the form of rodents. We got to talking about them last night at a dinner I hosted for our senior class Bible study. One of our students was inspired by their plight and decided to cheer them up. I leave you with the creations he brought to the picnic today:
This is me on campus earlier today with one of my sophomore gals, enjoying the sunshine on Leap Day! It’s been a beautiful one here.
Tomorrow won’t look quite as nice, I’m headed north to speak at Word of Life Assembly. The service should be great, but there is snow in the forecast–pray for safe driving! Sunday I’m on to International Christian Center in Oakland. These are both churches I’ve been to before and I am excited to go back and update them on what we’re up to here at Stanford.
Next week my mom is coming to visit. She’ll be here to head north with me to speak at a Ladies Conference next weekend. I’m looking forward to our time together.
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