What's Cookin'

Today is our last bible study in the book of Acts. Classes end on Wednesday and finals are next week! Please pray for our students as they try to cram in lots of last minute studying and finishing things before they go home for winter break.
While we were not able to finish the book of Acts in one semester, we already have plans to continue through the second half of the book next semester! It has been awesome learning about the first church and how things got started.

This Tuesday will be our last ‘Remix’ of the semester. We are going to have a wonderful night of singing, a devotional and of course food! We are extremely excited about how well the first semester of our large group meetings has gone. We have a wonderful group of dedicated students that show up every week and we are really looking forward to next semester!

Today we got our first real snow of the season! Christmas is coming!

Today we had 20 people at our house for our C.A. Christmas Party! We had so much fun playing games, getting gifts and decorating cookies. We also all went out and got the ugliest Christmas Sweaters we could find! It was a lot of fun to be all dressed up together. We even held a vote to see who had the ‘worst’ sweater.

James won the prize for the ‘Ugliest Christmas Sweater’

This was the first ‘Black Friday’ that Laura did not have to work. She decided that since it was not required of her, she would not go out in to the madness this year! Ethan however, was eager to head out and see what kind of deals he could find. After several hours of waiting in line and observing the craziness that ensues on this day, he came home after buying nothing but fruit snacks! Needless to say, Laura was glad she stayed in bed!

This year we decided to do something we had never done before! We stayed home.
Ethan wanted to take on the challenge of cooking his own turkey, so we had our own Thanksgiving dinner. Just the two of us. It was wonderful! Ethan’s turkey turned out wonderful and we didn’t forget a thing!

Following the concert, Ethan was on the Reset team. This team was in charge of the follow up with any students that made decisions for Christ or rededicated their lives to Christ at the concert. Each member of this team was handed a stack of names to call and invite to a free event of pizza and bowling on campus to try and get them plugged in to a campus ministry or a local church.

Tonight there was a huge outreach event on campus! Pulse ministries put on a Christian concert that was FREE to all college students. U of M students could get in at 6:00 and the doors opened to all other college students at 6:30. There were three bands that played that night, Gritz, Family Force 5 and Owl city. Not only was this a free concert, but every student that attended also heard a clear explanation of the gospel while they were there!

I do not have exact numbers, but it was told that more than 200 students made decisions for Christ and more than 100 others, rededicated their lives to Him!

Our prayer walk team focused on the power of our God today.  As we walked around campus we prayed with faith that there is nothing that God can not do.  This was encouraging to us as we pray for students at campus.  Add the University of Minnesota to your prayer list and join us in prayer.  We ask God to show up in big ways.

Today we covered Acts 4.  The students have been learning a lot from the book of Acts so far.  We are focusing on how the early church started and grew and grew.  We were noticing today how this is the second instance noted where the early believers shared and gave everything they had to one another.   I was personally challenged to keep my eyes open for opportunities to be able to share and give to those who need.