Leading Worship!

Last weekend was our annual May Daze staff conference. Once a year, all 200+ midwest Cru staff get together for a long weekend. I've only been staff with Cru for 3 years, but already I am experiencing the wonderful, tight-knit family present in this group of people. I was so very encouraged to hear at this conference what God is doing in the lives of college students around the world - and to just spend time hanging out and reflecting on my year with people who understand what it's like to be a missionary.

As a member of the region's operations team, I get the chance to serve our staff at a lot of conferences, assisting in setting up, running and packing up after events. I love being a part of the behind-the-scenes experience of a conference, and it's fun to do it with such great people that love our staff and love operations.

This year, however, I got the chance to do something totally out of my comfort zone - lead worship for these 200+ people! I've lead worship in various capacities before (Cru, Vespers, Church, small conferences) - but never such a large crowd, and never in front of this crowd that normally sees me behind the scenes. I connect very deeply to God through music, and place a very high value on creating an environment where people can easily enter into and meet with the Lord. I have never felt very confident as a musician, but I've always loved singing.

Leading this weekend scared me (...a lot...) but I knew this opportunity would be a huge chance for me to grow in some significant ways in my walk with God. Before each worship session I had to continually lay down before the Lord my fear of man, and remind myself that the Lord has given me this huge passion and small gifting, and He would get the glory if I was obedient to combine these two things, and share it with others, when he asked me to.

Kingdom Called

A few weeks ago, all of the international summer project teams gathered together in Minneapolis for a training conference, named Kingdom Called. This is probably my favorite conference of the year (I think I say that about every conference!).

Saturday night of the conference, I spoke to the students about some of details regarding their summer project. As I looked out on the room full of college students that I am sending to the world, I felt totally astounded and grateful that God would choose use me to play such a vital role in fulfilling his Great Commission.

One summer can change everything. When I ventured out to Sao Paulo, Brazil as a college student on a summer project, I had no idea God would stir such a passion in my heart for telling others about the life I have found in Christ. That same passion is still present 5 years later, and I pray every day that it will never leave.

There have been many highlights this spring in my ministry:

• Running a national webinar training for college students raising financial support for international summer projects. I also coached 3 other Cru staff to lead these webinars, and together we trained over 300 students from across the United States.
• Seeing over 90 students apply to in the Ghana Summer Project - about half of them were selected to participate (and 30 of them are women!)
• Preparing for my own summer project in East Asia. I can't wait to share Jesus with east asian college students and help train and coach the female college students on my project.

Here's a shot of me on stage speaking to the students about a website that helps them track their financial support that they raise for summer project.