Suffering and Joy, hand in hand
As many of you know, I just recently returned from a five day trip to St. Louis. The reason for my trip, Urbana 09, a missions conference for North American students hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada. A group of us InterVarsity kids in the SDSU chapter (22 to be exact) headed down late in the afternoon of the 26th. Before we even left though, we new God was at work and had big plans for us and the world while at Urbana. Below is my journal, as well as some reflected thoughts now that I’m back in South Dakota.
Saturday – December 26, 2009
It’s a rough ride down. We were suppose to leave at 11 in the morning, but it ended up being much later due to the winter storm we were experiencing. The Interstate is closed, and three members from the group are stuck on the West side of the state. As soon as the Interstates open up, four cars decided to head on out, one stayed back to wait for those stuck still out west. We left from Brookings and made it to Sioux Falls to pick up a few more. We soon found ourselves divided though. Do we continue on in the bad weather, or stay there for the night. After some discussion, and payer, we decided it was God’s will for us to move forward. God blessed us with really good weather and safe travel to Sioux City, where we stayed the night.
Sunday – December 27th, 2009
The conference starts at 6:00 that night, so after a brief nap, we get up and head out on the road at 4:00a. Travel is good and God blessed us all the way there. We arrive at the Hostel we are staying at. The host was super nice and kind. They actually gave us a night free, as well as providing free bed sheets and towels. We quickly(ish) unloaded and started walking towards the conference. It’s about a 4o minute walk. We go through the registration process and head to the large group session that started at 7:00p. And wow, was it intense. You could feel the presence of the Spirit of God. Here there were 16,000 people from all over to worship one God. Wow. We started singing the song “Doxology”
Monday – December 28th, 2009
Today, we had our first Bible study. It was a small group (read less than 100 people) study, and we dived into John 1:35-42. Very cool stuff. I was reminded that in Jesus, we are given a new identity by God our Father, but I was also realized that the identity He gives us doesn’t come in fullness right away, but rather fullness in time. After the first large group session, I laid down near our group and pretended to sleep. I was broken and just wanted to cry, so I did, and prayed. I’d become very distracted during the worship session. I don’t know why. So I cried and prayed. Finally, I was like, just keep fighting this war and things got better.
At the first seminar, we talked about sharing the gospel. The interesting part though was when we started talking about Mark 1.
14After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
We defined near. I always thought it meant a temporal near, but it turns out that isn’t it. Apparently, when Jesus says the kingdom of God is near, it means that it is physically near, like you can reach out and touch it near. How cool.
The evening large group was a full circle of emotions. We praised and thanked God, sang in multiple languages, heard/saw Rahabs story, and heard about slavery. Intense.
Tuesday – December 29th, 2009
Today was super intense too. I missed all the sessions but did stop over at InterVarsity booth in the Global Connections room. I spend about 20 minutes talking to a guy about going on staff and he asked me to come back later to do three 15 minute discipleship like meetings. I signed up for a time slot and came back. Each meeting ended up taking closer to 30 minutes, but it was awesome! God really took away any reservation I had about wanting to go on staff today and I can’t wait to talk to Aimee to start going down the application process.
Break time
I think I’m going to get this part posted. It’s almost been two months since Urbana and I want to give you all something. I’ll do my best to get Wednesday and Thursday up sometime in the near future, but no guarantees. I apologize for taking so long on this.
