4th quarter!

Last week we had the keynote concert on Sunday and it was a huge huge success. Keynote is basically a summer project like ours but its a touring band that goes to other summer projects and puts on an evangelistic concert for them and their guests. They play secular songs, and when they've "earned the right to be heard" they share the Gospel through one of the band members testimony. That night we had almost as many of our friends and coworkers from Santa Cruz as we did project members, we had over 100 in attendance if you include us and we cleaned out 30 boxes of pizza :) BUT most importantly that night decisions were made, we had 3 new brothers in Christ that night!!! We also had 7 people who asked to talk with someone about knowing God, and lots of spiritual conversations happened after the show, it was a huge success and God showed up and moved and the Peter Pan was definitely full of his Spirit. So people reading this celebrate with God in heaven and with us here in Santa Cruz that we have new brothers in Christ!

So, the reason for the title of this post being 4th quarter is because that's the speech I gave today to all of project. We have a week and a few days left here in Santa Cruz before we all go to Yosemite as a group to cap off project. It would be SO easy to sit here and say its been a fantastic summer, we did a lot of great things, God's really moved. We're worn out. Let's take this last week and relax, let's call it a summer and say we've planted seeds and anything we haven't done yet lets leave for next years project. But I challenged project NO! This is the 4th quarter, and if you've ever played a sport then you know 4th quarter isn't the time to relax. 4th quarter is when both sides bring the most intensity, its when you hit the hardest, its when you make the big shots, when miracles happen. It's when you leave everything on the table, so that when all is said and done you know you gave everything you had and you have no regrets. It's when comebacks are the most likely, because the other team gets desperate and in our case that's Satan. He's desperate, he wants a comeback, he knows fatigue is setting in on us, and that we want to relax and hes waiting for us to get complacent so he can wreak his havoc on everything we've done this summer. So, tomorrow we are having a big Christmas in July theme party that we spent a junk ton of money on and we're inviting all of our co-workers to where the Gospel will be presented and testimonies will be shared and fun will be had. Sunday we are staging a giant gladiator battle on the beach to draw in a crowd, and the last man standing is going to share the Gospel with the onlookers. Monday we are having our biggest Monday Night Live of the summer and its going to be praise and worship night, with tons of prayer incorporated in between 15 songs. Tuesday we're re-running the day laborer outreach that I said was such a success last week. Wednesday we're having a Hawaiian night theme for dinner to attract more co-workers again to hear testimonies and just to come hangout. Thursday we're re-running the international outreach from last week. I didn't get a chance to blog about it but it was also a huge success and the internationals are so fun to interact with. Most of them are blank slates, no religious upbringing, they hear the Gospel and they get these big grins and ask things like "He really died for ME?" They are all really interested and many of them have been coming to our dinners and events since we went and had our outreach over there. Some have even come to church with us. Friday we're having pick up soccer with our co-workers after lunch which is always a lot of fun. Saturday we're having another themed dinner night, mismatch night. The cook is going to make a bunch of food that just doesn't go together, and we're gonna dress tacky and its gonna be awesome, and hopefully lots of coworkers will come. And with all of these dinners and stuff, we've built trust and relationships all summer with our co-workers and the international students and from past project we've heard that the last 2 weeks is when most people will make decision to trust Jesus Christ so for a lot of our co-workers we haven't had that heart to heart yet but we really feel like they are ready to have that conversation and so we're going to be having it if they come to these dinners or parties or soccer games or whatever. So it's the 4th quarter, we're hitting hard, we're bringing the heat, and the devil is going to hate it, and God is going to show up and I am SO PUMPED!

Let This Be The Day

The title is just really random because I was listening to a song titled that when I started to write this. The words say "Let this be the day, people turn to you Lord. Let this be the day, lives are wholly restored. Open every eye to see, open every ear to hear. All the goodness of your kingdom has come near. Come bring your peace to all the nations. Come bring your love to every heart. Send us in power to make your kingdom known, Holy God we're crying out!" The guy who wrote it came and led worship at the church I'm going to here and I bought his CD and I love his music a lot. Anyway on to what has been happening in the past week. 2 of those 5 outreaches I was talking about have now happened. A large group went and prayer walked the campus of University of California at Santa Cruz and I heard it was really powerful. Unfortunately all the servant team leaders had meetings so I couldn't make it. The other one was this morning, and it was by far my favorite outreach that we've done on project. It required me getting up at 6:30am and everyone else getting up around 7 but every guy who drug themselves out of bed loved it and said it was totally worth getting up for. It was a guys only outreach because we were going to a hardware store where middle aged hispanic men gather early in the morning waiting to get hired for a day task like mulching. We had one girl Kelly Toner who came because she knew spanish almost fluently, she was such a huge help! She was so worried that she wasn't gonna be as good at spanish as everyone expected or she wasn't going to be useful or something I don't really know but she stepped out in faith and God so used her, it was such a blessing she was there. Anyway so it was her and 12 of the 24 guys on project who signed up and woke up and came with us, we had spanish bibles and spanish "More than a Carpenter" books and spanish "Knowing God Personally" booklets, and even though there was a language barrier like I said we stepped out in faith and God really moved. We couldn't really verbally present the Gospel to these people at all but through like basic spanish and them knowing basic english we were able to just love on these people, try to get to know them a little bit, we brought them all biscuits. They all looked so dreary and like they hated being there when we showed up but when we left there was a definite buzz and an energy and they were all smiling. Because we loved them the way Christ loved us, they were interested in reading what we gave them. Before we left people were already opening up and reading the book of John, flipping through the Knowing God Personally booklet, and even giving extra bibles to their friends as they walked up. The whole scene was just so awesome and encouraging, God overcame a language barrier and His spirit totally moved this morning! Seeing it was very humbling too because knowing I could barely even communicate with these people was just a reminder of how God doesn't need me, and its not how well I can present the Gospel but how God moves that changes lives and today it wasn't God using my talents it was God working despite what I lacked and that was very humbling and awesome and inspiring. But, those two outreaches are only like 3 hours out of the past week so I should touch on the rest of it. One of our family members here on project got sent home, it was a real tough decision that our leadership had to make but this person had broken the alcohol policy as well as some other stuff and after a ton of tears and prayers and seeking the Lord and talking with the staff who had already left at this point, our directors decided they had to send him home, so that was sad for all of us, and especially his roommates. I didn't know him all that well but it was a significant enough event to our whole project that I felt it was worth documenting on here. We're planning a huge Christmas in July party/outreach for July 24th and we found out that the evangelism team still has a lot of budget to use so its going to be pretty awesome, we're all getting really excited for it and its 2 weeks off. Shout out to my awesome brother Mike for getting a job! It was so cool to hear from everyone back home about how much he came back from camp on fire for God and now hes starting his job which I know hes been trying to get for a while so I just wanted to say on here I'm so proud of you man and I love you and can't wait to see God continue to work in your life and grow you up more and more. We also had our guys room ask one of the girls rooms on a creative date which was a lot of fun. We took them out to dinner then took them to the Salvation Army and let them pick out ridiculous clothes for us to wear around the rest of the date. Then we went roller skating and then out for ice cream. It was all lots of fun. Sorry this is really scatter brained I'm trying to think of all the really significant stuff from the last week. Oh! last Monday right after I wrote my post, after the staff left and the four student directors took over they immediately opened in prayer and then called all the students on the whole project up in a line for them to wash our feet which was amazing! We could all feel God just taking up that whole room with his presence, and I remember thinking to myself "only God could inspire students to do something like this" Anyway thats been a few highlights from my week, I love you guys!

long days

So even though the title is long days, and I'll be focusing on two really really long days, I feel like I should at least write something about saturday, and that pretty much flew by. Saturday was my day off of work, and I slept in til about 10:30 which was really nice. When I woke up I did a little bit of cleaning around the room because we do that every Saturday and then a group of us went to In N Out burgers, which is like the cookout of the west coast but its better! I came back and then played some Staff vs. Students basketball which was a ton of fun, we played 3 on 3 and we killed them but then we played 5 on 5 and we lost but the scores weren't really the important thing, mostly it was just a lot of fun. Saturday night I picked up my pay check, took a walk down the wharf, and watched the Sandlot back at the Peter Pan, which was a good movie. Anyway now for the really long stressful days that followed. Sunday was July 4th, which is the busiest day of the year on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Normally, all crusade students have Sunday's off to go to church and have all of our meetings that we need to have to plan for the week, but they couldn't afford to give us all off on the 4th. In fact, as opposed to giving us all off work, we all had incredibly long shifts. On top of having really long shifts, we had at least 3 times the normal amount of customers and the whole thing was just super stressful. Also, that night lots of incidents were happening as everyone left like fights, some being gang fights and some not, people resisting arrest and getting tazed, car accidents, you name it and it was probably happening. We could see most of it from the Peter Pan parking lot because we're like 2 blocks from the boardwalk, and we all have to walk home. Some people didn't get off until close to 2am. I stayed up late watching to see if everyone got back alright cuz I was worried, and as I was sitting by the street I think I saw a police car, fire truck, or ambulance go by at least once per minute. Today everyone on project had off since we normally all have Sunday's off but that didn't mean today was relaxing. It did mean I got to sleep in again but since I woke up its been go, go, go! I had to lead my first evangelism team meeting today, which was long and stressful because to set the tone for a culture of evangelism once the staff leave we are going to be having like 5 outreaches in a matter of 2 weeks, some of them being really huge outreaches. We basically had to plan a giant choreographed beach battle, an evangelistic concert with sound stuff and circuits and advertising and all that, plus a big outreach at the international students hotel, and a few minor ones on top of that all at my first meeting with no staff :). Now I kind of have a breather to write this blog before we have to plan a whole lot of stuff to honor the staff tonight at the Passing the Baton meeting, they leave tomorrow morning! Hope all of you guys are doing well, keep praying please! I love you all!

it's july!

Hey guys so its only been 3 days since my last blog post, and I managed to find enough free time to post another one. I spent all day wednesday with my Uncle Richard which was a lot of fun. He came and got me in the morning and took me up to San Francisco for a Giants vs Dodgers game and we had some pretty good conversation in the car up there cuz its an hour and a half drive and I hardly know my uncle since he lives on the opposite side of the country. The game itself wasn't great, the Giants got blown out and it just wasn't fun to watch but the atmosphere of the ball park was really cool and he showed me around the park and showed me the little bay area where people sit out there in boats trying to catch home runs. Then we left early because the game wasn't really that good and we took the scenic route so we got to talk in the car for like 3 hours and basically on the way home we drove through redwoods, mountains, past beautiful lakes, and finally down route one past a lot of beautiful ocean views. Anyway then my uncle stayed for dinner with us at the Peter Pan which was also pretty cool and then we said our goodbyes and it was all a lot of fun. We had our action group meetings that night, which is what we call our bible study basically for those of you who don't know, that was pretty cool. The topic of the study was how depraved we are as humans and it was really good because it just made us appreciate God's grace all the more. That night I was super hyper for some reason, I had caffeine but I had been hyper before I drank it and caffeine usually doesn't have that kind of affect on me anyway but regardless I was bouncing off the walls, I don't usually get like that but when I do its fun. Yesterday was mostly just work, but I got to share the Gospel with my coworker which was amazing. She was from a place in Taiwan where there is little to no religion and she was basically a blank slate and full of questions and she asked if I was born believing Christianity, which was a dead serious question but I had to try hard not to laugh, from there I said I'll tell you my story and I got to share my testimony. When she heard what God had done in my life she said that sounded so amazing but I told her it wasn't exclusive like she could have that too. When I told her that Jesus had her name in mind when he died on the cross and that he died on the cross to have a relationship with her she smiled ear to ear and said "really?" so all in all it was truly an awesome conversation and I can't wait to talk more with her and answer more of her questions. Today we had friday morning training which was good but I'm not going to talk much on it because lunch is ready! Love you guys!