Mardi Gras Outreach

As promised, more information about Mardi Gras Outreach!

Last week I lead a group of 8 students to Texas to spend five days working with a church and another Chi Alpha. We worked with the International Church of Nacogdoches and Chi Alpha at Stephen F Austin State University. And we indeed had a blast!

Friday we had dinner with Chi Alpha small group leaders and then was introduced to campus via prayer walk. On Saturday we did lots of cleaning on the Chi Alpha properties, had a great discussion about international students over lunch, and then filmed promo videos after dinner.

Sunday we went to church and then got to participate in their children's church program on Sunday night. Their church host a program every Sunday night as a collaborative effort of all the churches in the area. The churches go into the low income areas of the city and bus in over 300 kids. They then teach them about Jesus, get them to memorize Scripture, and feed them dinner. They also go and visit the kids at home each week and get to know their families. It is one of the most amazing programs I have ever seen for kids. It was amazing and so awesome to get to be a part of it. We rode the buses to pick up the kids and then got to perform a skit for them.

Starting on Monday we were on campus all day. We set up a table and did contact table for six hours both days. Contact table is a chance to meet students and start to form relationships. Each day we started off with two of our guys playing some live music and we had a question of the day written on our white board that students could stop all day and answer. Usually there were just two of three of us at the table and the rest of the students were out doing 2x2s. 2x2s is where you pair off and go talk to people. The icebreaker for talking to students for us was, "if you could have one prayer answered what would it be?" Then our students would talk to people and then ask to pray for them right there. It was awesome!

For the night time we got to lead all the Chi Alpha small groups on campus. It was a lot of fun and the first time for most of my students to get to lead Bible study.

Tuesday looked exactly the same, but with a different contact table question. And we played capture the flag on campus after small groups. We saw so many people come to capture the flag that we had just met at contact table on Monday and Tuesday. It really was awesome!

I think for me one of the best parts of the trip was to see my students step out of their comfort zone and lean on the Holy Spirit to reach out to people. They were bold and took opportunities as they presented themselves. They pushed through their fears and inhibitions and let the Holy Spirit guide them. It was amazing! I had the honor of seeing all of my students grow in some capacity during the trip!

We also had a blast during our time together! It was a combination of hysteria (as in the team was absolutely hysterical) woven through deep conversations about God. It was an amazing balance and it really was the dream team! They were incredible and I could not have asked for a better group of students!

Here are some pics from the trip:










Until then......