Last week (3/21 - 3/25) was PFA's Go For It Week where we train our students in evangelism and challenge them to reach out to their friends. On Monday, I had the privilege to teach our students how to transition into spiritual conversations with others as well as how to present the Gospel clearly and simply. Our students made goals for themselves for students they wanted to pray for as well as conversations they wanted to initiate about the Gospel. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had the pleasure of hosting Robby Dawkins. Robby is the senior pastor and founder of the Aurora Vineyard Church of Aurora, IL and is one of the people I interviewed for my thesis on miracles. He was also featured in the international documentary Furious Love. On Tuesday evening he came and trained the students in our ministry to do "power evangelism," a term coined by John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard movement. He taught us about healing, prophecy, deliverance, and ministering the presence of God and told us a number of amazing miracles stories to illustrate his points. He prayed for few students and at least two were healed completely! He also prophesied over a number of students, moving many to tears as they heard God speaking to them in a direct way. On Wednesday, Robby led our Noon Prayer time giving a great devotional and prayer ministry. Many students were touched powerfully by the Holy Spirit. Afterward, we split up into groups and went out on the campus asking if we could pray for people. Robby led a few different groups of students. I ran across a couple of my old volleyball teammates, one who is an alumnus, happened to be back visiting campus. I prayed for them and had Robby pray for them as well. Robby prophesied over both of them and one of them had a headache that was healed. Robby also prayed for a couple of the barristas at one of the coffee counters and they were both completely healed! On Wednesday evening we had our big campus-wide event, "Do Miracles Happen Today?" (photos above). Robby told some incredible miracle stories and explained why he believes Christians should pray for and expect miracles today in light of the Gospel. He also prayed for about 10 people and around 6 or 7 were completely healed. He held a Q&A session where skeptics voiced their opinions and questions and Robby answered them well. He then had people come forward for prayer if they wanted it. Robby prayed that God's presence would come down and touch each person. Two of the skeptics came forward as well. They said that they were Christians but didn't believe in any of the supernatural things that Robby was talking about. Robby prayed that God would shower them with His love and His Holy Spirit. They both started shaking uncontrollably and would've fallen over if other students weren't right behind them. Afterward they both said that they lost control of their bodies and felt energy surging through them and the presence of God. Robby later prophesied over a few other people, all saying that he had told their life story without knowing them and leading one girl to tears. The students were incredibly blessed by Robby's visit and he made the front page of The Daily Princetonian! The next morning, I went to pick up Robby at his hotel to take him to the airport. I joined him inside as he was finishing up his breakfast. As we got up to leave he handed the bill to the waitress and thanked her. She responded by saying, "Thank you so much for the prayer! My back feels amazing now! I just called my mom and told her!" I asked Robby what happened and he said that God told him she had back pain, he asked to pray for her back, and she was completely healed and shocked. Our last event of our Go For It Week was our "Bring a Friend" 802 on Friday. Our very own PFA ministry fellow Scott Jones gave a great Gospel presentation and at least two people gave their lives to Christ for the first time. This weekend we have our much anticipated Ivy League Congress on Faith and Action where over 400 Ivy League students and speakers will gather to inspire faith, discuss callings and vocations, and learn more about how to seek God zealously. Register at the link above! Stay tuned!
Check out our new 24/7 prayer room! We've called this room and initiative Tiger Watch combining the Princeton mascot and the theme from Isaiah 62:6-7, "On your walls , O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth." We want to see Princeton become a praise in the earth where God's Kingdom is established on our campus. Our goal is to give him no rest until He does.
This initiative was just started this year and our goal is to have enough people sign up for shifts that there will be people in there praying around the clock! I'm amazed so far by the dedication of our prayer warriors who are consistently filling up the 2am to 9am shifts! We still have a lot o slots to fill up though but God is good and we're eager to see what He'll do this year through Tiger Watch.
Students are free to pray in the room in any manner they want but the room is divided up into 6 stations to guide student's prayer if they want. This may be especially helpful for those who find it hard to spend an hour or half hour in prayer. Click through the slide show above for explanations about each station. If you're a student, conatc
Sorry for not updating in a while! These past few weeks have been very busy but also very rewarding. It's wonderful to be in the presence of so many people who are dedicated to Christ and to be able to encourage others to seek after Him. We wrapped up our freshman campaign with a weekend at the Jersey Shore. We took about 20 freshmen on the trip with us along with a few upperclassmen and staff to help facilitate. We had a great time building relationships as we played games, built sandcastles, swam, watched movies, and shared meals together. Although we only had 20 freshmen on the trip, we have a total of 88 freshmen participating in our Bible Courses. That's roughly 8 percent of the freshmen class!
Speaking of Bible Courses, I'm blessed with the responsibility of co-leading three of our freshmen men's courses. We're doing an in-depth study of 2 Timothy over the course of the Fall semester. The guys are loving the course and beginning to comprehend the gravity of Paul and Timothy's dedication to the gospel as they encountered severe suffering and persecution for their faith. The letter serves as a great challenge to all of us to seriously consider the truths of the faith, who Jesus really was and is, and whether or not he is truly worth living for, suffering for, and dying for.
I'm also getting to meet one-on-one with all of the freshmen guys in these courses to encourage them and help them pursue God. It's been a blessing to get to know them all and see them start to grow rapidly in their faith even though they've only been here a couple of months!
Our large group weekly meetings for the students are called "802" mainly because that's when it starts. We had to bounce around a few locations this year because they seem to enjoy double booking us with other events. We're not sure if this is intentional or not but we're still having trouble finding a consistent place to meet. One of the places we met all of last year and a few times this year has been Frist 302, the lecture hall that Albert Einstein used to teach in! I suppose it's a blessing that we're simply getting too big for that room now! We're consistently hosting well over a hundred students every week. This past week we got to hear from Dave Harvey, a pastor, author, speaker, and church planter who's recent book Rescuing Ambition has created a lot of buzz. He gave a great message this past Friday to our students about how best to use our ambition. His central point was that while worldly ambition leads us to glorify ourselves and become prideful, we can channel that ambition to our faith which will lead us to seek God's glory and become great for Him. His main text was John 12:42-43. "Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God." It was a great message to preach to so many ambitious young men and women, especially for those Christians who want to be able to use their ambitions but want to stay humble.
One of the most exciting things we've started this year is our 24-hour prayer room, located right across the street from campus. It's open to all students and we have a Google calendar where students can log in and sign up for shifts. The room itself looks amazing. Some of the students painted and decorated it with curtains, pillows, chairs, lamps, Bibles, art supplies, a stereo for worship music, and a large red cross on the wall (I'll post pictures soon!). There are six different stations inside to guide people through prayer. Some people might not be used to praying for a half hour or hour time slot so they can spend 5 minutes at each station for a half hour or 10 for an hour. The stations are Worship, Read/Pray the Word, Confession/Repentance, Personal Prayer Requests, Prayer for Princeton, Prayer for the World. I've been able to meet with a number of my freshman guys in there and pray for them and encourage them to seek the Lord. Our goal is to get people to sign up for enough shifts so that we'll have people in there praying 24/7! It started a couple of weeks ago so we're not quite there yet but it's amazing to see the die-hard prayer warriors completely fill up the calendar from 2am to 9am every day! (If you're a student reading this, email me about how you can sign up for a shift!).
This week is midterms and the students are bogged down with exams which means it's a fairly light work week for me. Next week is Fall break! This weekend I'll be attending an Ivy Student Leaders Conference for upperclass students interested in pursuing ministry. It'll be a blessing to encourage students just a couple of years younger than me and tell them about how much I've enjoyed doing ministry at Princeton. After that, from November 3-7, I'll be in the Chicago, IL area attending a ministry/prayer conference with a couple of students and many of our staff members. The featured speaker is John Mulinde! He's a pastor from Uganda who played a key role in the revival that took place in that country in the late 90's. I've gotten to hear him speak before on DVD's but it'll be a great blessing to hear him speak in person. Stay tuned for updates about that! Overall it's been such a blessing to work here and I'm incredibly excited to see how God is moving in the lives of Princeton students this year!
The past two weeks have been incredibly busy with our PFA Pre-Retreat and with all the freshmen that have just moved onto campus. It's hectic and exhausting but already very rewarding.
For our Pre-Retreat, we took a group of 45 upperclassmen and staff to Ocean City, NJ for a few days at the shore. The purpose of the Pre-Retreat is threefold: to have a great time of fun and fellowship together, to draw close to God in prayer, teaching, and worship, and to inspire and equip our upperclassmen to reach out to freshmen once they get back on campus. We had a great time on the shore. The mornings were filled with worship and training, the afternoons were free for games and beach fun, and the evenings were devoted to worship, prayer, and teaching. On our last night, we heard a powerful gospel message from Scott Jones and two students decided to follow Christ for the first time in their lives!
Since coming back to campus we've held a large number of events aimed at meeting freshmen, helping them get settled in, and introducing them to PFA. On Saturday we had our Move-In reception with all the other evangelical campus ministries where we got to meet a number of freshmen and their families. I was really moved by one couple who showed up to the reception without their freshman son. They have been missionaries in Africa with Campus Crusade for Christ for the past 25 years and their son, who has grown up with them on the missions field has recently decided that he's an atheist. They were initially afraid that they were sending their son to a "spiritual wasteland" but were pleased to see such a strong Christian community on campus. They gave me some information about their son and asked me to reach out to him by any means possible, passing on their mission to me. I'm on it!
On Monday we had our Open House where we met a ton of freshmen and told them about our ministry. On Tuesday we had a lawn party with badminton, bean bags, bocci ball, frisbee, and food. There, I met a sophomore who was a freshman back when I was a freshman! He took 4 years off to play bass with his rock band and toured the East coast and the South. Now he's back as a sophomore, turning 24 at the end of the month. He said he's interested in our Bible Courses so hopefully he'll get involved and we'll have another talented bassist on the team.
Thursday we had our first Disney Movie Night featuring The Lion King. Unfortunately it rained so we had to relocate indoors which means the crowd diminishes significantly. We only had about 40 people there but a high percentage of them were freshmen so that was a success. On Friday night we had our first "802" meeting of the year. "802" is the name of our large-group ministry meeting for PFA with videos, announcements, worship, teaching, and fellowship. We broke all of our attendance records with around 170 people showing up at the first meeting. Our average attendance last year was around 75 so this was a major success. Our ministry director (and my boss) Dan Knapke gave a great message on the supreme value of knowing Jesus Christ.
Last night, Sunday, we had our second Nassau Christian Center service of the year and had plenty of new faces in the congregation. Our worship band is sounding better than ever with a couple of great new additions. Pastor Quincy Watkins gave a great message on sowing and reaping in the Spirit. Overall it's been an incredible blessing to be a part of this ministry. I've learned so much in just the past few weeks that it's hard to believe I've only been here that long. Thank you so much for all of your support and prayers. Stay tuned for more updates!
Eddie and I have finally gotten ourselves situated in the new place. We bought a couple of rugs and lamps and other items to make the place a little more livable. There were also plenty of other odd items that were left behind from the former occupants including the metal "Chat Noir" and "Banania" signs that we now have on display in the kitchen.
So far I've been having a great time working at the Wilson House. Since school hasn't started yet, most of what I've been doing is working on my fundraising and reading training materials. I'm way ahead on my training which is good but I still have a ways to go on my fundraising. If you want to sponsor me, I could still use it!
Aside from that I've been helping to coordinate the PFA Pre-Retreat. Every year, PFA (Princeton Faith and Action) takes our sophomores, juniors, and seniors out to the Jersey shore for a few day before school starts. It's a great time to catch up on everyone's summer, plan events for welcoming the freshmen to campus, and pray and worship together to get back in touch with God's will for our lives and our ministry. The Pre-Retreat has a special place in my heart because that's where I first got involved with PFA my sophomore year. The 42 of us will be leaving this Wednesday so keep us all in your prayers and I'll be sure to take lots of pictures for my next post.
As we were sitting in the Wilson house, calling and emailing scores of landlords to inquire about their listings, my fellow intern and friend Eddie called the golden number. From a random listing on the University's off-campus housing website, he managed to call the same Christian couple that sold the Wilson House to Christian Union! They're a very sweet older couple and they were very friendly and accommodating. They were especially excited to find out who we're working for!
We now live in Apt# 1, 264 Hawthorne Ave. which is within walking distance of the Wilson House. We've got the first floor all to ourselves. There are two tenants on the second floor and one on the third and they're all either professors or lecturers at Princeton University. Quiet folks, and they're not around much. It's on the corner of Hawthorne and Harrison and the local grocery store and shopping center are right up the street on Harrison.
The huge selling factor for us was the fact that the place is fully furnished. The family that lived here previously had to move out in a hurry and asked if they could leave their furniture. All of the furniture was bought new within the past two years. In the photos below, my bedroom is the one with all the junk in it. It's much bigger than I need it to be and has tons of closet space. It also has an extremely comfy queen-size bed in the middle.
The bathroom has its ups and downs. It's incredibly snug...... and purple. REALLY purple. Basically, if you're sitting on the toilet, your face is in the sink. However, it comes with some nice hand-towels and the shower head is about as high as the door frame which is fantastic for me. I can't tell you how many times I've used a shower head that barely comes up to my sternum.
The kitchen comes with a full set of silverware, glassware, tableware, plates, pots, pans, serving utensils, cutting knives, cups, jars, rice-cooker, toaster, kitchen table, and more. It's also worth noting that both Eddie and I have our own full sets of silverware, plates, pots, pans, etc. So it's a good thing there's plenty of cupboard space. It also has a walk-in pantry which is great.
Eddie's room had a twin bed in an iron frame that he barely fit in. The landlords are buying Eddie a new bed frame. We just need to get the old iron one out to the curb. Eddie's room is slightly smaller than mine but his has a walk-in closet.
The living room is a great size and has a couch and chairs and the dining room table. It has a faux fireplace so we can't use it but it looks nice. The backyard has plenty of parking space for guests and a storage shed that is shared by the tenants and the landlords. It's barely being used so it has plenty of space in it. The landlords have a couple of window-mount air-conditioning units in there and a big charcoal grill that they said we could use. We'll definitely make good use of both of those while the weather's hot.
The landlords are fixing up the place for us too and are painting it inside and out, redoing the electrical wiring, repairing the tile in the bathroom, and redoing all the wood floors. Also, as a discount, they agreed to sponsor the both of us in our internships! It's an incredible deal and an incredible blessing. God has blessed us greatly and continues to provide for those who love and seek Him. I'll post again when we get unpacked and make the place look a little more livable.
As you may have read from two blog posts ago, this summer I stayed with the Angell family in Clinton Corners, NY. They have a family blog that gives more detailed accounts of the events of this summer. I was greatly blessed to live with them for just over two months and I have many fond memories and stories from this summer. Unfortunately, my new camera arrived on the last day of my stay there and these were all the photos I managed to take. The first half of the photos are from out in their cow field where we caught the cows and put halters on them in order to train them for showing in the fair later this month. I was accompanied by Hannah, Rebecca, and Caleb Angell (three of the eight siblings) along with their younger cousin Amelia. Afterward, I took a few photos of Rebecca's sheep. The second half of the photos took place at a neighbor's farm where we attended a potluck and square-dance with other neighbors and friends. We danced to traditional American and Irish square-dancing music played by a local family band. The food was delicious, the people were friendly, the music was lively, and it was a perfect way to end my summer on the farm. I can't thank the Angell family enough for supporting me and taking me in as one of their own this summer. I'm now in Princeton, ready to start my training for Christian Union! Stay tuned!
I've recently been hired as an intern for Christian Union! CU is an organization dedicated to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the Ivy League and training and equipping future leaders for the sake of Christ's Kingdom. As an intern, I will have the privilege of ministering directly to as many as 15 to 20 students in one-on-one mentoring meetings throughout the year. I'll be able to encourage them in their faith, help them apply the Bible to their daily life, bear their burdens in prayer, and show them how to be a witness to those around them. I'll be able to pray with students and staff every weekday for an hour during our noon prayer time. I'll help facilitate a number of student outreach events as well as our weekly "802" meetings. I'll also be helping out with a few weekly Bible studies. In order to do this I will have to raise roughly $16,000 for my salary. My first training session is August 9th and it would be a wonderful blessing to have all of my support raised by then. Christian Union will be paying me the rest of my salary. To do this there are a number of ways to help. First, Christian Union has created a sponsorship program with two ways of giving. An Outreach Sponsorship is $20 a month and helps us in our efforts to spread the Gospel to those who have not yet heard it through free book distributions, campus kindness giveaways during midterms and finals, special Christian speakers that students can invite friends to see, and a number of other special events. The second kind of sponsorship is a Growth Sponsorship which is $100 a month. A Growth Sponsorships helps provide for all of the expenses involved with ministering to students who are Christians and who are involved with Christian Union campus ministry. These two sponsorships are explained in more detail in these two pamphlets (pdf files): Christian Union Sponsorship BrochureStudent Sponsorship Program Summary Sheet You can also give any other amount you choose. To give online or over the phone, click here. If you would like to receive a support letter from me in the mail with more information and a return envelope for giving, please send me an email with your address. If you'd like a phone call from me, please send me your phone number. More than any financial support, I need prayers. If you would like to partner with me in prayer as I venture into full-time ministry I would be grateful. I can be reached at 760-212-0060 or at [email protected]. Thanks and God Bless!
It's been a while since I last posted and many exciting things have happened in the meantime. I'll give you the bullet-point version. - I graduated! On June 1st, 2010, I graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Sociology.
- I moved out! My parents helped me pack my things and store my gobs of junk. Many thanks to them.
- I was homeless! I stayed with my mom in her hotel and prayed for a place to stay for the summer because I hadn't thought that far ahead.
- I went to see Robby Dawkins! He is a pastor from Illinois that I interviewed for my thesis on miracles. He was also featured in the movie Furious Love. Last Thursday (June 3rd) he came and spoke at a Vineyard church 45 minutes north of Princeton. I went with my mom and my friend Justin.
- He was cool! Robby told lots of great stories and we had an awesome ministry time at the end with prophecy and a few healings. It was a small service with only about 35 people there so Justin and I got to talk to him for a while which was great.
- The Lord spoke to me! I asked Robby to pray for my living situation. He prayed for a while and said that he heard God saying that He had my back and that He would provide for me this summer. Then he prayed some more and the name Tom came to him and he thought that maybe somebody named Tom would provide me with a place to live. Then he prayed some more and said that this provision would be an act of divine intervention for me and that God would use it to bring divine intervention to others through me.
- It was true! The day after, I went with Justin to visit our friend Nate Angell's farm in upstate NY. His father, Tom Angell invited me to stay with them for the summer! That's where I am now, working as a farmhand with this amazing Christian family! Way cool. To find out what's going on at the farm, here's a link to the family's blog.
- I was interviewed! Last Monday, Dan Knapke interviewed me for the internship position at Christian Union. It went well.
- I got the job! Now I just need to raise half of my salary by August 9th. Yikes! I'll be sending support letters out soon.
- I got a haircut! Sarah and Rebecca Angell gave me a great haircut and amused all who witnessed the process.
God is good and He's been very good to me. I'm excited to be going into ministry and I'm even more excited about what God is doing in Princeton!
It has been in the family since my grandmother got it from a World War II-era recipe book designed to help people with the vagaries of war-time food rationing. The dish was called Irish-American Spaghetti. As a child, my father remembers it being one of the meals he had about every other week. The only variation from the original recipe has been his addition of mushrooms to the mix.
1 lb of noodles
1 lb of ground beef
Sauce:
2 cans tomato soup
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 or 2 cans of mushroom pieces and stems, undrained
3 tbsp California blend garlic powder
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp onion powder
1/2 tbsp chili powder
A few shakes of salt and pepper to taste
Stir in sauce ingredients on medium/high heat. It should be starting to boil by the time they're all in. Start to brown the beef and turn the sauce to low heat and let simmer. Once the beef is browned, dump it in the sauce pan and simmer while the noodle water boils. After noodles are done and drained, dump the sauce into the noodle pot, mix, and enjoy! Serves 4-6 people depending on how hungry they are.
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