Refreshing weekend!

This past weekend all the USC staff went to a mini-conference held at California Baptist University (CBU) from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening. There were 5 campus ministries represented there, being USC, CBU, UC Riverside, San Diego State Univ and Chico State Univ. It was so refreshing!! Usually whenever there are conferences for campuses and churches in California they're not productive at all and basically gives people a chance to wax eloquent about their ministries and there's never any talk about how to be more effective. Basically they feel like a normal meeting :) But this was a smaller conference spearheaded by the leader of Christian Challenge at CBU (who was also one of the staffers of Project Impact when I went through it as a freshman!) and it was for like-hearted collegiate ministries about how to be more effective, talk about why we do what we do, how we can pray for each other and going over the vision and values of Christian Challenge.

All these ministries are like-hearted because we all have the same background, being we all came from the ministry at the University of Oklahoma. My boss worked there for a year and the leader at CBU, Brian, was a staffer at OU for a few years. The leaders at San Diego and Chico are my age and they just started them up this year! They were both involved in the Challenge at OU and the guy at Riverside was involved with Brian a lot once he came out west and then he started up the ministry at UCR. It's been awesome to have more ministries with the same heart as we do - to see students come to know Christ through natural relationships, walk victoriously in community and be equipped and motivated to reproduce their lives in the lives of others around the world. And because our hearts are knit together it was just so refreshing to see them again and go over the hardships we face and pray for one another. I came back on Saturday night just pooped from the weekend so I basically watched a movie (Stardust) and went to bed!

I just love how even when you have friends who are at different campuses (and states too), you can still come together for a weekend as though no time has passed and simply enjoy, encourage and challenge one another! God is so good :)

Needless to say it was a great weekend and I have a lot to think through! But I think it was just what I needed!



And I now leave you with the funny of the day: