Hello friends!
This past Friday, we turned the Main Chapel into a Luau grounds, complete even with a beach in the corner, for our Hawaiian themed Murder Mystery Theater. We had about 100 student leaders and freshmen show up and participate in groups to solve the case. Our staff really got to "ham it up" in our acting exhibitions for the year, and the night was a good opportunity for people to bring people together for a good time.
The past few weeks, we have been getting our Jamaica trip finalized. Last year, 110 staff, leaders and freshmen went to Port Maria and Montego Bay for Spring Break. This year, we expected we might have to go to three locations. To our astonishment, 200 people signed up to go, and our director Stephen had to go to Jamaica last week to look into additional locations, finally arriving us at the place of 3 locations (adding St. Ann's) with about 70 people each. We're blessed: what a great problem for a ministry to have.
God has really been pouring out favor on this year. It shows not just in numbers, but also in depth. In our Freshley Monday night service, we just wrapped up a three week series inspired by the book Radical by David Platt (I highly recommend reading it). In all my years in Athens (this is my 6th - wow), I have never seen a community so purposed to reach out and take the kingdom of God not just to this city, but to the world - and the weight behind the momentum is a community of 18 and 19 year old Freshmen in the body of Christ. Love it.
Please be praying for the upcoming school breaks - our freshmen and student leaders have all grown so much, and Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks can be so discouraging every year when they are removed from that intentional community. The enemy really gets people down with the lie that they can't help but backslide into who they used to be. Pray that these breaks would be seasons of taking more ground and advancing even further into what God wants to do in them and through for the rest of the year.
