Back to school... almost!

Thanks for stopping by my blog. As you probably know, I'm currently very close to my support-raising goal for the year -- I am still in need of around $150 per month to finish my support, and I can't begin working with students until I reach that. Here are some ways you can be praying, dear friend:

- Pray that I would trust God to bring in the rest of my needed support before Tuesday, August 28 (our Talawanda students' first day of school)!
- Pray that God would be preparing the hearts of the students at Talawanda.
- Pray specifically for the Lord to direct us to those who would either be receptive to the Gospel or would be excited to step up as leaders in their school.

Thank you so much -- your prayers are so valuable to me!

His,
Emily

A Successful Boycott!

Hi friends,

Thanks for all your prayers for our Boycott Barbie girls' outreach last week. Everything went smoothly and we had a pretty good turn-out, but mostly, it was just a blast! These precious students don't hear often enough how they have infinite value, worth, and beauty because of the good God that created each of them. Knowing and believing this truth is so life-changing, and it's my prayer that these girls got to hear straight from their Creator that night.


We spent the first part of the evening snacking and chatting, and the girls had a chance to get a free Mary Kay makeover from one of the moms. We played some games and then gathered together for a brief message. I got to share with these girls the idea of the "World's Worth Scale" -- depending on our intelligence, status, talents, and appearances, the world tells us how important or worthy we are. I contrasted it with God's Worth Scale, which says we are all at the top of the scale no matter what. Katie, a college student I mentor, followed me by sharing how these students could experience this love from God by beginning a relationship with Him.


We got great feedback from the students, and Roxanne and I are excited to follow up with many new girls. Would you pray that God would allow us to get together with these girls and continue to point them to truth?

I hope this helps you see how impactful your prayers are. God is doing tremendous things here in Oxford!

His,
Emily

FASTBREAK!

A Weekend To Remember...

Greetings! I'm back from my first Student Venture conference experience as an intern (rather than a college volunteer). It was amazing! I was truly humbled by how God gave us challenging circumstances so that we would trust Him, and then how He would show up and blow us away with His plans. I would like to share one sweet story with you...

Our Sundays at Fastbreak are typically focused around outreach -- we take the kids out into the community and give them an opportunity to give back. However, this Sunday was a little different!

We had planned to give out "Boxes of Love," which are boxes of non-perishable food items, to needy families in the area, but our shipment mysteriously never arrived. Apparently, God had a different plan! Our outreach coordinator decided instead to have each of the students at Fastbreak write a letter to someone back home -- someone close to them with whom they've never shared about having a relationship with Jesus.

As you can imagine, this was a huge challenge for high school students -- it's much harder to talk about spiritual things with those closest to you than it is with a total stranger! But our kids rose to the challenge, with God's help. Their letters went to best friends and family members, telling how much fun they were having at Fastbreak and how much they wanted to share about having a relationship with God through Jesus. We mailed these letters off this week, and we're excited to see the fruit of this sweet outreach -- our students have already asked if we would meet with them and their friends to share the gospel!

It wasn't our original plan, but God knew what He was doing. What a neat story! The picture above is two students working on their letters with the help of one of our volunteers. Below are Betsy and Brittney, our THS girls, writing to their best friends!


Thank you so much for your prayers for this weekend. It was humbling to see God show up in such big ways! Join me in thanking Him for these sweet students.

I'll keep you updated on the busy month ahead!

His,
Emily

Time to get Creative...

If God closes a door (literally), He opens a window, right?
Well, if you're here because you just got my e-mail, you know that this was no ordinary week at Talawanda High School. The administration has decided to really tighten security and has therefore changed their policy to keep any outside group at all from being on campus. Obviously, this is not great news, since so much of meeting with and connecting with students happens right after school. Thankfully, though, the principal is a Christian, and desires to help us in any way possible.
We are praying that God would provide a faculty member to "sponsor" us, so we could legitimately be on campus after school, in the teacher's classroom. Please pray that God would raise up a teacher that would jump on board with Student Venture and open his or her classroom to us!

So, as you can see, we're down but NOT out. :) It's disappointing, but praise God that we've had a few years of meeting students and establishing some sort of presence on campus. Prayerfully, this will cause our involved students to step up and be real student leaders on campus, since we won't be there!

If you're wondering what I'll be doing in the meantime -- don't worry, I'm quite busy! I can still meet with the students I know and their friends, because they can just meet me out in the parking lot or at another location. In fact, my ministry time with students doesn't look that different. It's typical that when you know a few key students, you meet a dozen more. What a blessing!

This is also a key time to figure out what next semester will look like, so Roxanne and I are taking some time to pray and plan for that.

Time for a Break... Fastbreak, that is!
Another critical thing to pray for right now are students deciding to go to our winter conference in January, Fastbreak. Typically, if students don't sign up before Christmas break (Dec. 15) they aren't likely to go with us. We have over 10 students interested this year (we've ever only taken 5-7 before!) Please pray for Stephanie, Betsy, Emma, Jenni, Stacey, Tashina, and Ashley -- all girls I'm meeting with who are thinking about going!

Man, so much to tell you, and so little time. I really appreciate your faithful prayers and your investment into this incredible ministry. A door may have closed, but that just means that it's time to get creative in how we can reach students...

Thanks for loving our precious youth!

His,

Emily

Crazy November!

Wow... time sure flies when you're working hard, doesn't it?

I can't believe Thanksgiving is this week. It seems like just yesterday I was writing to tell you all that I was about to move back here! Anyhow, things are wonderful here. It has been a jam-packed month, with our first two major outreaches. They both went so well -- thank you for praying!

From both of these events, we have about 40 students that we can follow up; these students either indicated that they made a personal decision to invite Christ into their lives or they are interested in hearing more about God or Student Venture. Now, when I walk onto the high school campus after school, I see about a dozen students I know by name -- this is so exciting!

We will focus on following up these students for the next couple of weeks until Christmas. We are also recruiting students for our winter conference called Fastbreak. You'll hear more about this conference as it gets closer, but trust me, it is an incredible weekend. We have only had a few students in past years, but something tells me we'll have plenty more this year... :)

Here are some pictures from our past events. Enjoy!

This is a picture of me and Emma, one of our SV kids. I love spending time with this girl. :) The other is Roxanne and two girls who were brand new to SV. They had a blast!





These are hard to see, but this is Andre Kole in action. The first picture is Andre and Ryne Robinson, the star wide receiver of the Miami football team -- he got his head chopped off in one of Andre's illusions! The second picture is Andre actually levitating. I know it's blurry, but still, it's incredible.




Thanks for your encouragement and support -- I love sharing all this with you! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving :)


His,

Emily

Getting into the swing of things...

Hi friends,

It is so great to be here -- I am loving every second of life back in Oxford! Thank you so much for getting me here and praying me here.

Things have already begin with a BANG here. As you probably know from my e-mail updates, we have had an incredible volunteer interest -- this is unprecedented, as we've typically only had a core of 4 at the most. In the past two weeks, I've met with about 6 college girls who are interested in volunteering to talk more about the ministry and figure out a time for them to come to campus with me. It's so exciting, and I really enjoy still being connected to Miami students in this way.

Our SV Kickoff was a great way to remind students that we haven't fallen off the face of the planet since they haven't heard much from us since last May. ;) We had 7 students and 11 volunteers show up, and all are excited to get connected to SV! We're working on two big events for November (more details to come...), but in the meantime, I just get to spend time meeting with high school students. In my mail prayer letter, I'll tell you more about the incredible high school and college students I get to spend my days with. I LOVE MY JOB! :)


I'll leave you with a couple of pictures -- some ministry-related and some personal!

Here is my Student Venture team:

Roxanne -- she has interned for two years with SV in Loveland, OH, and she just joined full-time staff here in Oxford!

Chris -- he has been our one-and-only SV staff member in Oxford for the last two years, and now he's on staff too!

and of course, me :)

Here are some of the awesome Miami students who are interested in volunteering with SV this year. We got ice cream and hung out uptown in the park on a beautiful fall day :)



And HERE are pictures from my camping adventure last weekend! We had a long weekend because of Columbus Day, so I went with some staff members from the Miami campus team to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. We hiked and camped Friday night; then Matt, our fearless leader, took us rappelling on Saturday -- off of a 150-ft. cliff! It was a weekend of firsts for me!





It took me about a half an hour, but I finally got off the ledge and descended down the cliff. It was amazing!

Thank you again for the special part you play in my life and in the lives of so many people here. I can't wait to give you the next update!


Emily

I'm finally here!!

Well, I did it -- I made the move! I can't even begin to tell you how amazing it is to be back here in Oxford. I arrived on Thursday night, about 15 minutes before Miami's Campus Crusade weekly meeting began. I actually needed to be there for work -- some of the SV college volunteers were handing out flyers to recruit more volunteers. We had a short informational meeting in the back afterwards, and to my surprise, 21 students showed up! (This is huge because in the past three years, we've had between 5 and 15 come.) I talked to quite a few who are very eager to get involved and be committed, so that is a huge answer to prayer. Next weekend (6-8 Oct) is Campus Crusade's Fall Retreat for college students, and I'll be going to work on recruiting more volunteers (getting to attend the conference is just one of the perks of my job!) Please pray that even more students would show up, and after prayerful consideration, decide to volunteer with us.

I spent the weekend attending a friend's wedding as well as moving into my new house. I live with the Associate Director of Crusade at Miami, Jane Armstrong. I also live with one of my past housemates and best friends, Lauren Nagel, who is interning with the Bridges International Ministry here at Miami. Our fourth housemate is Mallory, a grad student at Miami who is connected to Crusade through Butler University. It's an incredible place to live -- I'll put up pictures of my room once it's a little more in order ;)

I've gotten to spend wonderful time with Miami's staff team this weekend. I know I am going to learn a ton from the leadership that surrounds me here this year. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Miami and Campus Crusade, let me break it down for you a bit.

Miami -- MU has a campus staff of about 30 (including interns), some who have been here for over a decade. Campus Crusade here has one of the strongest ministries in the nation; the team is typically made up of staff that work with the general campus of Miami. This year, though, our team has interns with Athletes in Action (athletic ministry), Bridges (International ministry), and two staff and one intern (ME!) with Student Venture high school ministry. Miami is a forerunner in the idea of integrating these branches of CCC into one whole. That's why I get to be part of the wonderful Miami Crusade staff team!

Student Venture -- This "team within a team" consists of Chris McClelland and Roxanne Weaver, who both just joined staff this year, and me, the intern. We work together, obviously, but we get to be part of the campus planning, prayer, and training times. The idea behind this all is that we want to be training our high school students to be effective in college as Christ-centered laborers, and we also want to include more college students in reaching high schoolers with the gospel message. It is great to partner with this campus ministry.

Hopefully, you can start to see how I fit into all this back here in Oxford. I'll spend the next few days preparing for Fall Retreat, which starts on Friday. On Monday (9 Oct), Chris, Rox, and I are meeting for an SV Mini Retreat to cast vision for the beginning of our ministry this year.

Wow, you're still reading? You're probably related to me. ;) I hope this helps you understand a little bit of what it looks like now that I'm back here.

Check back for frequent (shorter, I promise!!) updates on the SV life!

Thank you for your prayers and your support in my ministry.

His,

Emily