First project day!

We had our first project day yesterday! We all met at the beach at 7:30am (ugh) for an hour of praying together. This year we will be starting every project day with an hour of prayer together - yesterday we focused on thanking God and admitting things we were scared about for this summer, it was awesome to hear everyone be so honest.

After our prayer time we went back to the directors house where some of the staff had prepared a huge breakfast for all of us, it was a great time to continue to learn more about everyone and share some stories. At breakfast we learned that one of the students had a huge orange allergy - so we all had to wash our hands and get rid of the oranges before she could come in!

Once we finished breakfast Ball State and Virginia Tech split up into separate rooms to take time to get together as a school and share some of the things we were expecting or hoping God would do in us and through us this summer. I had the chance to share with everyone at school my decision to not pursue Catch 31, and that instead I was going to focus on building relationships at the restaurant I will be working at this summer. It was great to get to share that with everyone, and to see that they all supported me. After everyone had shared some we split up into groups of two and spent some time silently praying for each other.

When both of the schools were finished meeting we met back out on the beach for some good old fashioned school competition! We had games of ultimate frisbee as well as kickball set up for the schools to play against each other. I played on the ultimate frisbee team, along with 7 other boys :-). Ball State plays frisbee together every Sunday afternoon during the school year, so we were quite a bit better than Virgina Tech, most of them had never played before. It was a quick game of 11-0, but probably the best part of the game was when Aaron made a diving catch into the ocean, and he claimed it for me :-). He ended up cutting up most of his back and losing his sunglasses in the process, but he said it was worth it.

After everyone was tired and sun burnt from playing on the beach we went back to our condos to make lunch and meet with our life groups. Life groups are a small group of girls or boys from the same school that meet every week to share about life, work, their time with God etc. I get to be a life group leader along with my friend Meredith for all of the Ball State girls this year. We spent our first life group getting to know each other a little better, sharing in more detail about our fears & expectations for the summer as well as some good old fashioned boy talk ;-).

All the students and staff members met back up at 2pm to head over to Grace church for our first workshop. We spent the rest of the afternoon writing down our stories of coming to know Jesus, then a few of us, myself included, had the opportunity to share our stories in front of the whole group. Then we spent some time breaking up into groups of 2 and sharing our stories with each other after we had discussed how to share your story in a precise manner. Neil talked about how our stories needed to connect with whoever we were talking to. He suggested that we share 4 main points, first that we share what our life was like before we committed ourselves to Christ, second, what made us realize that we needed Jesus, third, how we committed our lives to Jesus, and finally, what changes we saw in our life after we started living for God.

After our workshop we went back to our condos and had dinner as a house before we met back up at 7pm to go out to the boardwalk for our first chance to meet people and talk with them! We went out in groups of three with five simple questions to ask people, we told them that we were students on a leadership program for the summer and that we were going around trying to get different opinions for everyone. We asked them five questions. 1. What did they do. 2. What do you think is the biggest problem in our culture. 3. What bothers you the most about religious people. 4. What is one thing you would change about yourself. 5. What is a time you experienced God. Then through these questions we were able to strike up a deeper conversation with a few other people.

I think this was an awesome first project day, we were all mentally, physically, and emotionally spent by the end of the day - but I think it was a success.