A Week of Transition

The past few days and the week ahead have been and will be a week of change. This past Thursday and Friday our guys took a retreat from life in San Diego and held sessions at a Bible camp out in the desert. It definitely was my highlight of project thus far. Our leader is one of the best speakers I have ever been around and he held two final sessions Thursday night that left thoughts in my mind I will never forget. There were also long sharing sessions of what God has been doing and just scriptural passages that bring us refreshment and they brought our men's group extremely close. The women on SDSP also held an overnight retreat on Friday through Sunday. While they were gone we cleaned their condos for them and left them flowers. Needless to say, they were impressed! This week our staff will leave project for good, yes for good. It is crazy to imagine how everything will keep going without them but anyone who has ever gone on project has said that the second month of project is the best. Now the students will have a chance to take charge and make the project their own so I am excited to see what is ahead.
On Saturday my friend Ryan and I were walking to Ralph's (a local grocery store) and on the way I was praying to God to put someone in my path to just talk with. Well as we left we missed the bus by no more than 20 seconds and we weren't happy because they only come around every 15 minutes. God of course was working for our good and his. Sitting at the bus stop was a homeless man named Kevin. He had a terrible accident a few years ago where he skid hundreds of yards but miraculously survived. Earlier in the day I had just been debating reasons for God's existence and was struggling to come up with good reasons but as soon as he told me his story I was in awe. He also was quoting scripture left and right and I felt the Spirit working through him right into my heart. Sometimes the homeless has very skewed views on God but this man was solid. I could see his depravity and immediately recognized God showing me my own need for humility and brokenness. Once again, I was blessed more than he was I'm sure. We waved two buses by as we sat talking to him and I hope to cross paths with him again soon. Please pray for his health, certain addictions he has, his job situation, and that his faith would only continue to strengthen.
This past week also focused a great deal on international missions. We focused on reaching minorities on campuses here in the USA and this upcoming week I am going to help our UCSD team on their campus which consists of a large number of international students. Our leaders had us listen to the message by John Piper called "Doing Missions When Dying is Gain". This talk is one of Piper's best known and it applies to ministry in your hometown and abroad so go to desiringgod.org and download it and listen to it! We also had an international dinner this past Wednesday in which God showed me a need for the Gospel in countries like Italy and France that are comfortable socially and physically yet very lost spiritually. He also placed a huge burden on my heart for Asia. Two of our leaders are taking a team there next summer and they are hoping it is the largest international Summer Project ever. East Asia is more open to the Gospel now than ever before and as campuses of 60-80,0000 students are being launched there, the time is now to bring Christ to them. We also heard how half of the world's population lives in that area of the planet and that the Gospel is spreading there more rapidly than ever. At the end of our dinner my leaders played a video. It was actually a major surprise to me because I actually am in the choir in this video but did not realize I was being recorded when I was singing. I hope it shows you though how badly certain places, including your hometown, need the Gospel and they need it NOW. Please pray about these countries and consider leaving all you have to go there and share Christ. Especially pray for East Asia and the believers currently living there and that God would raise up missionaries to be going there very quickly. I hope to blog later this week as it will be an odd sort of week full of major events on SDSP. Thanks for reading and know you're all in my prayers!