Remember Conference 2009

"Remember the days of old; Consider the generations long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, Your elders, and they will explain to you."

This past weekend we had our annual regional student conference.  this year the conference was called Remember.  The theme was all about the stories of long ago and remembering where God has brought us all from.  The conference was held in Pine Valley, CA.  Schools from California, Arizona, and even Hawaii joined up together to hear teaching from the word of God, worship together, and fellowship together.  It was an amazing weekend of fun and growth. 

We heard four different messages from two campus leaders, the parents of our regional leader, and the director of the Middle East Navigators.  These ranged in topic from "What does a full life look like?" to "The blood of Jesus."  Also during the weekend we had two breakout workshops all attendees picked beforehand.  These covered topics from Guy/Girl Relationships, to How to Disciple someone, and also Jesus in Popular Culture.  There were about 10 to choose from.  A lot of our students attended the relationship workshop, as this is a very hot topic in the college years, as we all know ;).  It was fun being able to talk about subjects and dig into the Word to look at what God says about relationships.  All of the male students woke up on the second morning early together in order to spend some time looking at the example of Isaac and Rebekah in Genesis 24.  It is so encouraging and exciting to see students really dig into the word and have a desire to learn what God has to say about certain topics.  Another workshop that seemed to be a popular    one with our students was the Biblical Masculinity workshop which looked at Genesis 1-3.  Everyone learned so much this weekend and it's neat to share what we've all learned and see it applied. 

The last night of the conference after the large group meeting, we played games.  This was a great time for our campus ministry to get to know other students from other campuses.  Our school had a great time hosting a few games of "Mafia!"  This is a classic game our fellowship enjoys playing together and it was a great way to new people involved and comfortable. 

Will you please pray that as we continue on after the conference and as the weeks pass, I and everyone else from the conference will continue to seek God, apply what we've learned, and encourage each other as it is often times after great spiritual passion that the evil one attacks others.  This has been a great time for our ministry and we pray God will continue to use it for HIS glory.   

A New Quarter, a New Nav Night

Welcome back to UCSD!  We are already weeks into the Winter Quarter at UCSD.  We have revamped our Nav Nights, continuing our Bible Discussions, been to a students conference, and seeing students grow more and more. 

Last quarter our Nav Nights theme was serving as a team.  This  quarter we really want to help our students recruit and reach out to their non believing friends.  So instead of doing a service project every other week, we decided we would have our normal Nav Night Bible Study time an d then have a different, fun activity afterward every night.  We also moved them to Friday nights as to make it as accessible to all the studying students of UCSD.  This has been a blast to see new faces come to our Nav Nights.  Also, this quarter we are going through the book of Ephesians.  This has been a great place to take our fellowship into a little deeper material and look at what it looks like to be the body of Christ and many other things. 

One of our first weeks activities was taking the group out to Boomers for some miniature golf.  This was actually a really cool way we saw God provide.  All that week leading up to Friday night we had been looking for coupons for miniature golf at boomers, so as to make it cheaper for the students.  We couldn't find any all week.  That Friday, we had our Bible Study in Ephesians with all of the students and went down stairs in the Price Center to get dinner together as a group.  As we went downstairs, an employee for Panda Express was handing out coupons for a free entree.  So we decided to go there for dinner.  God provided a cheap dinner.  However, once we got there, ordered our food, and went to check out, they handed each of us another coupon.  This coupon was an exact answer to prayer.  The coupon was for a free round of mini-golf at Boomers!  That's it.  No other purchases necessary or anything.  Just a coupon for free miniature golf.  So we ended up all getting in free and saving over $100!  God is awesome!  It was a great example for the students to see God provide, even in the little things.