The above photo features 9 of our 10 2008 Chi Alpha graduates at our Grad Banquet last week. I cooked dinner for 40 and we ate and celebrated together. After a time of worship and prayer, the graduates took turns sharing scriptures, songs and words of advice with the younger students. It was a meaningful but tearful night, we are really going to miss this bunch, they are headed all over the world to go to grad school and work in various fields. Stay tuned–I look forward to updating you on how these students start to change the world.

This weekend is graduation, honors ceremonies begin Friday night, with events on Saturday and offical commencement on Sunday. I’m looking forward to meeting student’s families and being a part of their celebrations. After that–it’s officially summer! This summer I have 4 main priorities:

1) study - I’m taking classes at the seminary and toward ordination.

2) faciliate summer Chi Alpha - We’ll have weekly worship gatherings and I’ll be involved in ongoing discipleship meetings.

3) itinerate - I’ll be doing some traveling to meet with supporters and give updates on our ministry.

4) rest - The pace will slow down from what it is during ths school year, which will be a blessing!

Thanks for continuing to pray and support us in this season–I’m so thankful for an awesome support team like you!

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.

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.

“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.

That’s me above with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and devout Christian. Chi Alpha co-sponsored a lecture and q&a session on campus with Dr. Collins last week. The event, entitled God and the Genome, was intended to encourage students that science and faith are not in opposition and it created a lot of interest on campus. We had between 2000-2300 in attendance. We had so many show up, in fact, that we had to create 5 overflow rooms with streaming video on the fly. You can watch his presentation below.

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Since then, we’ve been involved in faciliating discussion groups on the topics Dr. Collins addressed and encouraging our students to follow up with their friends as well.  As part of the event, we gave away 500 copies of the C.S. Lewis book “Mere Christianity” and it’s been interesting hearing students report on the conversations that the lecture, the q&a, and the book are bringing up with their friends on campus.

Tomorrow Chi Alpha is serving at New Creation Homes, a neat local ministry which provides assistance to unwed mothers and victims of domestic violence.  We’ll be making dinner, serving it to the gals and their children and providing childcare while they attend a parenting class.  Tonight, though, I’m headed back to campus for gal’s Bible study, we’re looking at the book of 1 John this quarter.  I leave you with one of my favorite passages from the book, from chapter 3, which we’ll be discussing together tonight.  It’s a big part of why we think serving others is so important:

16This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Go Giants! We had an exciting Sunday with our Chi Alpha students for our annual Super Bowl party. We packed it in to the apartment downstairs where my friends and co-missionaries live. It was a great time of being together, playing games and laughing a lot.

My sermon about the book of Jude from last week is online, you can watch it at the link below or check out the Stanford Chi Alpha website.

Google DirektLink

Tonight, on Super/Fat Tuesday, is the Francis Collins event Chi Alpha is sponsoring on campus.   We’re really excited about the chance for students to interact with this world class scientist.  Hope all is well where you are–don’t forget to vote!

That’s me (3rd from L) with some of my gals from Stanford Chi Alpha up in the Redwoods for our winter retreat last weekend. We were joined by Chi Alpha students from Southern and Northern California, Nevada, and Oregon for a three day weekend getaway. It was an awesome time of growing in relationship and learning together. Our speakers were Berkeley Church Planters Earl and Jan Creps and Sacramento Pastor Julian Newman. One of the main messages that I walked away from the weekend with is that the call to follow Jesus requires a laying down of self interest.

Back on campus life is full, week 4 of winter quarter starts on Monday and it’s been a busy one already. In addition to two small group Bible studies for undergrads, I am co-leading senior seminar with Glen this quarter about transitioning to life after college. We have a large group of students who are planning to graduate in the next few months and helping them prepare for their next steps is bittersweet.

In about 10 days, Chi Alpha at Stanford is co-sponsoring a lecture by Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and a beleiver. We’ve been promoing the event where he will speak on why science and faith do not have to be mutually exclusive. Collins wrote the New York Times Bestselling book The Language of God, which I (and many of our students) have been reading in anticipation of his talk; I really reccommend it, it’s interesting even to a non-scientist. Please pray for Dr. Collins and the lecture, which will also include a time of question and answers with the students, faciliated by the chair of the Stanford neurobiology department. We are hoping to have more than 1000 in attendance.

Thank you for your prayers for me too. I have been traveling a bit this quarter, speaking up at a high school chapel in Marysville and a youth group in Cupertino. I’ve got a few more dates lined in the next couple months where I’ll be speaking on the road, as well as my responsibilities here on campus–including this afternoon’s project–my sermon for Chi Alpha this week on the lesser known book of Jude. I pray for you today as Jude prayed, that “…mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.”

These are students enjoying their Thanksgiving meal at our annual Chi Alpha dinner.  We fed 20 folks this year and had a great time.  One gal, a student from Korea, brought her parents.  It was the first American Thanksgiving for all three of them–it’s always interesting to introduce traditions and hear about other cultures.

Since then, we’ve been winding up fall quarter on campus.  Last week was our last worship meeting until they return from the holiday break in January.  I spoke about waiting for Christmas, how to learn from the stories we read in Scripture of Mary, the Magi, and Simeon.

On Friday night, we had our Chi Alpha Christmas Party, a yearly tradition complete with a graham cracker gingerbread house competition and found object white elephant gift exchange.  We laughed a lot and celebrated together before everyone returned to their books–finals are this week!

Glen and I have been meeting one on one with each student, talking and praying with them as they prepare to leave campus for almost a month after they finish their exams.  This week I finishing up some administrative work and theological study before heading up  north for a week in Alaska with my family–I’m really excited for the time at home!

I leave you with a goofy group shot from last week–hope your season is filled with the peace and joy that comes from Jesus!