Hey all!,

It has been quite a while since I sent out an update. It has been an eventful semester! God has been doing some incredible things here at K-State and He has been changing me as well.

Throughout the whole semester myself and a number of other guys on the floor studied the book of John together. We went through a roughly two chapters during our discussion each week and discussed it together. It was awesome to get into the Bible together with other guys here on the floor. The story of Jesus truly came alive as we discussed it together and the ways it impacted us. I have been really encouraged by their faith.

God has been doing some incredible things through the Bible studies I have had a privilege to lead, but I just have to tell you about India! Throughout the semester the team and I have been meeting together periodically to develop our own personal unity and our knowledge of India. It has been a blast getting to know everyone a lot better and their hearts behind wanting to go. We have talked through each other's personalities with our strength and weaknesses. We have also talked a lot about conflict resolution so that we will makes sure to continually be united and growing together. We also did a lot of reading about the history of India and their culture. India's culture is fascinating with all their different gods, their festivals, and the crazy amount of people.

We have been learning a lot about how to live and communicate effectively in India. Our team leader who will be leading all of us in India has come back for a few months and we had the privilege of learning a lot from him. We went through a satsang (truth gathering) with him like we will do in India. It is getting me super stoked to be in India!

Please pray with me for these next few weeks as we all prepare to make the leap overseas together.

SMC

Hey all!,

I just got back from STUMO's winter conference, Student Mobilization Conference (SMC). I learned a ton and God really worked in my heart to apply some big takeaways. I met up with my team for the first time and we started working out a few details for actually getting overseas. It's getting me super stoked for the summer already! Check out a highlight video of the conference at this link...

http://smc2012.com/media/

My Testimony

I thought it would be cool to let you guys know my full testimony for my first post here. I really want you all to know everything so that you can really see how God has been working in me. So here I am!

I grew up with incredible parents who are very established in their faith in a town that traditionally is very grounded in the church. I can't remember ever not being involved in church growing up. At age five I prayed to follow Christ the night after my pastor shared the Gospel at church and I actually listened. My life really didn't look any different though. I spent the next decade of my life competing to be the best at everything and pleasing everyone that I possibly could with several "rededications" along the way to Christ in youth group. I wanted to have the best social life, the best grades, the most spiritual knowledge, the best athletic career, the best girl, everything. Football was my biggest idol too. I even went to the extent of lifting one on one with one of my football coaches, Travis Sears, every morning before school because I wanted to be the best. I really ended up being successful at all of my goals. I had the 4.0 GPA, the great social life, the hot cheerleader girlfriend, the status and leadership within youth group, and a successful football career that was leading to an opportunity to walk on and play division 1 football. I was really proud and content at the life I had built and all the while I believed that I was saved and going to heaven. Then the world I had built began to crumble. Our senior pastor ended up leaving on poor terms and caused a church split during my sophomore year of high school. Then my youth pastor ended up leaving 1 month later. Followed by that the relationship I was in ended. All of this left me feeling confused, broken, and empty. I was hurt so deeply that it forced me to think about what I was giving my life to. As I examined my life, I realized that everything I was pouring my life into was never going to be enough. Not only was it never going to satisfy me, but it would always fail me. This left me in deep depression and I turned to intense focus on football and searching in my church for any answers I could find. By the end of my sophomore year, I was so deep in pain that I became suicidal. There was a night that I will never forget. I held a shotgun, ready to shoot myself, and as I was reasoning in my mind to do it, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a voice say, "No, I'm not done with you yet." I turned around in horror to see no one there and knew at that moment that it had to be God or an angel speaking to me. I immediately put the gun away and stayed awake all night freaked out about what happened. That summer after my sophomore year I was never more intent in church searching for what that voice meant. During that summer and at the start of my junior year, the same coach I lifted and spent so much time with had a team Bible study going and personally invited me to come. I jumped on it because he was a consistent man of integrity that had an intense joy that was just magnetic. We started the study going through the book of John going into more depth and asking bigger questions than I had ever thought to ask. Then Coach Sears asked me a BIG question. He asked, " Who are you devoting your life to and shaping your priorities around?" Suddenly I was struck deep by the fact that I could only answer "me" when we had said a life of following Christ shapes itself around Christ. All of the sudden I realized that my life was not reflecting the Christian claim that my mouth was giving. My heart had never been changed. My sins were earning me an eternal separation from God no matter how much of a good, moral person I was. At that point I knew that I had been trying to fill the emptiness in my heart that only God can fill with everything but God and I was dead in my transgressions. I wanted Christ to be my savior, but I discovered that Christ cannot be my savior unless He is first my Lord. I knew then that God didn't just want my mind and my actions, He wanted my heart. That day I truly gave my life to Christ as Lord. From there our church hired a new youth pastor and I immediately attached myself to him, hanging out all the time drilling him with questions about what does it really mean to have a relationship with others and lead others to Christ. I also continued to spend a lot of time with Coach Sears because I wanted to learn to live the way he does. I would have thought that my life would get easier, but it didn't. I had a career ending shoulder injury that ended my dream of playing college football. It didn't get me down though because I had encouraging fellowship around me and I knew that I could have confidence that God's plans and dreams for my life are bigger than any dream I could ever have. As I came into college at K-State I joined Freshman Connection (FC), which is a freshman Bible study through Student Mobilization, because I wanted to prioritize my faith. Even though I hardly filled out the foundational study at the beginning I listened and soaked it up. I became so fired up that I wanted to share my faith with everyone. The problem was that I did not have a super clear picture of what that meant, probably because I didn't ever do my study. I definitely am not perfect and made some major mistakes along the way like trying to witness while drinking at parties a few times. I made some regrettable mistakes the few times I was drunk and I realized that my life looked no different than the lives I was trying to be a witness to and I have refused to touch a drop since because it hinders my relationship with God and my witness. I learned a lot from FC and one of my leaders, Tyler Geisler, must have seen something in me because he began to disciple me my sophomore year of college. He continued to poor into me and train me as I received training in STUMO at Kaleo and in many other avenues through STUMO. When I chose to make Christ my Lord, He led down this path of life that has transformed my into the new creation that I am today. Through the training and growth I have been through God has placed a vision of evangelism, discipleship, and missions in my heart that has led me to be a leader in several different areas at K-State. Over the past year God has been replacing my heart with His heart for the nations. God is not just a God of you and I, He is a God of the world desiring His name to be praised through out the entire world. Through this God has prepared me to be ready for the next step of taking me to India this summer.