Recap...

Okay, the last few weeks have been fast and furious.....and some of you know that I don't do real well when my routine is thrown off, so finals and Christmas break and traveling out of town have all thrown me for a loop! So, here's a little recap of the last couple of weeks.....

Hannah's Bridal Shower
We had a great time scrapbooking, being envious of her (Tad's) new peppermill/salt shaker, snacking, and catching up on wedding stuff. It was fun to have the recently-married Sarah Turner there to give advice and wedding tips!






I Heart Freshmen!!
I have loved getting to know some of the freshmen this year in the Freshman Small Group on Monday nights...a couple of weeks ago we met at our house and they got to experience the big red comfy couch!!


Weekend in the Windy City!
My friend, Karin, got married last weekend in Chicago. I lived with Karin and 14 other women at the Christian Campus House at EIU, and many of us still remain good friends. We had a mini-reunion at the wedding, shared hotel rooms and cabs and diet coke. It was good.

These are the friends who were present for a big chunk of the transformation God did on my heart during college. These were the friends who invited me to pray with people in a group for the first time. They were the ones I met with every week for small group bible studies and leader's meetings...they were the ones who were around the night Todd proposed to me...the ones I went out to Wrangler with in my pajamas at 2am....the ones who stood up with us at our wedding...the ones I sang the "flushing song" (a warning to those in the shower) to in the Cov House bathroom....

Some things have changed. Most of us are a little heavier, some have less hair, a few married with kids, some still single, some active in great churches, others have given up on Community all together. But for the most part, we have this deep, easy friendship....this bond, I guess, because Jesus changed our lives in college. Whether they were believers when they entered college or not, we all had a radical transformation of some sort when we encountered God in college.

They are one of the reasons we love campus ministry. If it hadn't been for the Campus House, we might have met eachother in a class or a club, but there wouldn't have been that bond that comes from a united purpose. For 3 years in college I traveled with the Speech team....I never talk to those people anymore. Lots of people I hung out with in the dorms, or had classes with, but those relationships didn't last past college. Community. Real Community, deep relationships seems to come with those people who we are vulnerable with, and the most vulnerable things I can think of are Worship and Prayer. That's why those deep relatinoships for me came with campus ministry.

So, that's why we do what we do. As Todd likes to say, "we loved the product so much, we decided to buy the company." And so I love to see our graduates going on to do ministry, catching that same vision for building Community with a united purpose of glorifying God....whether they're going to Guam or going to serve God in the corporate world or in the local church.

It's hard to say good-bye at the end of a semester, but I know that these deep relationships we have in campus ministry aren't the kind of the world - - like after high school when you never again speak to the person who signed your yearbook, "BFF". I'm looking forward to hearing from Matt and Brad and Jeff about what's going on in the world of Marketing, or in Mynmar, or wherever they end up. I expect to get Christmas cards with pictures of their families, support letters, emails, and wedding invitations. And when we get together, we'll forget how old we are, and how little hair we have, and how long it's been.....