happy thanksgiving!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Brian and I enjoyed our day off by sitting at Starbucks for an hour or so just reading and taking in the last bit of sunshine until May. Brian's been reading a lot about various men in Christian history such as Steve Saint, John Newton, and Adoniram Judson. After reading about the last guy, Adoniram, Brian was convinced that we are missionaries living a "nerf" life (you know what a nerf ball is, those soft, squishy, fake footballs and such). We're comfortable in our North American cushy home with a refrigerator, a yoga ball, and a DVD player.

Adoniram Judson was one of the first missionaries into Burma. You've probably heard a lot about Burma and its political unrest lately. Well, Adoniram lived through decades of unrest and his life was spent trying to bring the Gospel to the Burmese. He pretty much lived an awful life, malnourished, in prison, or attending to dying wives (2 of his 3 wives died while they were with him in Burma and his 3rd wife died shortly after he did). And he never really saw any fruit from his labor.

We are a part of a whole new generation of missionaries. We have access to anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world via satellites, we have a medicine for pretty much any known disease, and we have batteries so we can have power wherever we go. Are we living a "nerf" life?

The more I think about it, the less I'm convinced that we do. Yes we're comfortable physically, and I'm thankful to God for that every day. But we still face battle after battle for souls. I do not get on campus and stretch out my arms and say, "Welp, everyone's already following Jesus, so I think I'll hit the gym." It is far from that.

A week or two ago my friend and I shared the gospel with a girl who decided to accept Jesus as her Lord after hearing the Good News. We soon found out that she had studied with Jehovah's Witnesses and we're still working through a lot of fundamental issues with her regarding Scripture and the person of Jesus to name a few. Almost every time I talk to a Catholic student on campus I want to beat my fists against my forehead. They have the Truth but for many of them it's buried under piles of legalistic jargon!

To say that we live a "nerf" life might be true physically (thank you, Jesus), but I know when I open the door to my "nerf" apartment in the evenings my soul is often weary and my heart torn.

I can't believe it's already October. This semester has gone by so quickly. Last week all of the first year Bible studies officially started; I'm leading 2 this semester. I'm also leading a study for third year girls based on Robert Coleman's book The Master Plan of Evangelism. This weekend we had our fall retreat for all of the Campus For Christ students from Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, and Douglas College. Between the all universities we had close to 100 students!

As a staff team, we have been praying to see 250 students choose to follow Christ as their Lord and Savior this school year. So far we've seen 8! As a follow up to the fall retreat, we are having a "Week of Evangelism" this week at SFU. We are trusting the Lord to use us to find those 250 students for His kingdom through random evangelism on campus and other outreach events.

Here are some pictures of stuff that's been happening this semester (courtesy of Jeffrey and Paulman).

Group shot at the end of BC Summit 2007. (Brian and I are on the far right.)

We played volleyball during free time at the retreat. We were playing boys vs. girls... it was 10 on 3 at one point, but we said, "If you have the XY chromosome, you're not welcome on our team!" Here's our cheer:

We jumped up and down in the shape of an X.

We passed out almost 2000 Real Life Kits to students during the first week of school. Each kit contained a New Testament, evangelical tract, highliter, pillow case, and The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel or Soul Cravings by Erwin Ralph McManus. Through the RLKs we got close to 1000 contacts to follow up with, many of which led to great spiritual conversations.

Worship in Burnaby Mountain Park during our Kick-Off BBQ.

Thanks for your prayers everyone!