Catching Up

This is my attempt to catch up on blogging once again. This time I’m setting a more reasonable goal: a post a week. I hope you enjoy. :)

INSTALMENT UNO: Spring Break.

What a fantastic trip. Going into it, I was nervous that our group, comprised of many new and not very plugged in students, wouldn’t mesh at all. Or worse yet, that they would bug each other to death. You really couldn’t get a more robust mixture of USF students: a silent freshmen, a hyper-enthusiastic sophomore, a non-student bus driver, a brand new transfer student, an affluent junior, and a sassy freshmen, to name a few. Throw in a (sick) 24 year-old intern and you’ve got quite the combination. 

I was also nervous that we wouldn’t be very useful and would spend lots of time wondering what to do next, since we were the first group HOPE South Florida has ever hosted overnight. And admit it: we’ve all been to those service events that are so poorly organized that you feel like you’re just adding to the chaos by being another directionless person in the way.

Lastly, I was nervous that our students wouldn’t actually want to work, and would make us look very un-willing.

“You were a bit too nervous, Katie,” you might be thinking. Yes, yes maybe I was. However, if you were me, you would probably understand the motivation of all of my nerves. So what happened? Everything I was nervous about simply didn’t go wrong. Even better, my expectations were BLOWN OUT OF THE WATER.

Our group, diverse as they were, bonded like none other. They were sending around adorable facebook messages for two weeks afterwards about how they were missing the group and the week of service. Add to this some excellent organization by HOPE South Florida. We worked till we were tired to the bones almost every day. (In a good way.) And as to my last concern, we got several emails from HOPE and various people we helped commending our dedication to our work. WOW. God never ceases to amaze me.

Another wonderfully encouraging element I wasn’t expecting was seeing the students growing right before my eyes during the week. I encouraged the students to spend time in the Bible every day, and to ask me if they had any questions or concerns, and they did. Students that I didn’t even know owned a Bible were reading it during our spare moments. Students were also chewing on the problem of homelessness and how to compassionately help, and many good conversations were had in that area.

It was such a fun, encouraging, blessing of a week. I am so thankful. Without further ado: some pictorial evidence.

Here's our group before our "scrub a daycare/ meal serving facility until 3 a.m." night. P.S. Like the t-shirts? I think they turned out well!

A panorama of work in action, around 1 a.m. 

Painting transitional housing for folks in HOPE's program

Our group is so TOUGH. Notice Gypsy, on the far right, who was literally a snake hunter in the everglades for years before coming to work as a facilities manager for HOPE South Florida. Gypsy has some crazy stories.

Large Group and Other Activities!

Large Group:

We’re still having new students join us almost each week at large group, which is really fantastic. Many of my students are wrestling with understanding how to live for Christ in God’s strength rather than their own. Their view of God as a one-dimensional, demanding, taskmaster is very pervasive. This being said, our large group’s focus on Romans and dealing with sin has been a fantastic conversation starter for many students.

We are in a music leader transition, and we would love prayer for God to raise up confident, willing leaders who are willing to serve their campus by leading worship at large group.

Activities:

We had a bonfire/ barn dance in January, (see pictures below), I got to experience my first “Not a Date” night (designed to help students get to know each other without the pressure of a date!), and we’re headed to Fort Lauderdale for Spring break in less than a week! There are many other events that I would love to tell you more about, but for now, more about this spring break trip!

We’ll be working with HOPE South Florida (http://www.hopesouthflorida.org/ ), where we’ll jump into their work to combat homelessness and poverty in Fort Lauderdale. We’ll be serving meals to the homeless, deep cleaning their childcare facility, painting, and repairing homes. Please pray that God would use us to encourage the staff of HOPE South Florida, and to impact our hearts to love the people we encounter this week and beyond when we return to Tampa!

On a side note, I got to design the t-shirt for the trip, which made me very happy. :) The general idea is below. Stay tuned for pictures of us in the real thing!

We couldn't have asked for a better barn--complete with lights and picnic tables!

Action shots are the best.

The colors and fonts are a little different, but you get the idea. :)

Making Our Ears Attentive

Wow. A blog update is LONG overdue. In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try to catch up bit by bit, all the while not repeating what’s in my newsletter. You should be receiving my newsletter in the mail in the next few days. Let me know if you’d like to receive one but don’t! (katie.carroll@ruf.org).

Small groups are going wonderfully. It is so rewarding to see students in the bible on a regular basis, and to watch as caring community begins to form for (maybe) the first time! It’s also encouraging students to come to church, as our ministry team talks with our new, weak Christians about what it means to walk with Christ day in and day out. My car this week is full on the way to church—that is a HUGE answer to prayer! We’re reading through proverbs right now. Join me in praying, for myself and for my students, that God would cause them to treasure God’s commandments, to call out for insight, and to seek understanding like sliver. God’s promises are powerful and nothing is impossible for Him!

            My son, if you receive my words

                        and treasure up my commandments with you,

            making your ear attentive to wisdom

                        and inclining your heart to understanding;

            yes, if you call out for insight

                        and raise your voice for understanding,

            if you seek it like silver

                        and search for it as for hidden treasures,

            then you will understand the fear of the LORD

                        and find the knowledge of God.

            For the LORD gives wisdom;

                        from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;

            he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;

                        he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,

            guarding the paths of justice

                        and watching over the way of his saints.

(Proverbs 2:1-8 ESV)

Though I don't actually have a picture of a small group in action, these are some of the girls that I'm spending time with each week!

New Year, New Ideas

I hope you all had wonderful Christmases and New Years! I'm recently back in Tampa, ready to start a new semester of ministry with RUF at USF. As the new semester starts, we're putting several new ideas into play that I'm very excited about. I would love your prayers for their success! What a comfort to know that God must and shall succeed, even if it looks differently than what we expect. So here's what's up.

• New Small group structure. We noticed and kept hearing from students that they're still lonely (at least, the freshmen are), that they never crack open their bibles, and that they don't spend time in prayer. So we are shaking things up and are forming very small groups of about 4 students to meet weekly for about 30 minutes to an hour. They will share (how things are going), read (passages of the bible; we've got a not very demanding reading plan laid out), and pray (with and for each other) during this time. The prayer group I was a part of at Samford was a huge encouragement to me, so I hope the same will be true for these students.
• New daytime outreach bible study. Since USF is largely a commuter school, we decided to try having a larger meeting during the day on campus. We hope to reach many new faces and unbelievers with a lunchtime (food provided!) "Christianity Explored" bible study. I will start wandering around campus recruiting people to participate tomorrow, and the study will begin next Thursday. We want students to be able to come to this non-threatening study (they won't be asked to sing, pray, stand up, come forward...any of that! Just soak in) and see Jesus for who He really is.
• New music team--and I'm singing. As our music leader and our singer both graduated and moved away, we were left high and dry for large group music. Thus the need for me to sing along. ;) I told them not to expect extreme talent. We had our first practice last night, and it was very encouraging. I do love to sing! Thankfully, a past RUF intern now engineer who lives in Tampa volunteered to be the main leader, and we're so thankful for that. It's a large and rather demanding time-commitment for him to make, so we are so thankful for his willingness and leadership.

Our first large group is tomorrow night, and I'll start "postcarding" and going to events to promote RUF to new students tomorrow as well. I'll attempt to keep you updated on how things go! Thank you for your prayers and support!

November and December Happenings!

I am so sorry that I have turned into such a blog-slacker. It's on my to-do list every day, but it's the first thing to get pushed out of the schedule. To update you, though,  I've been able to settle into my new apartment here in Tampa, get to know a few more people at church, and really start to get close to my students. It takes a while to build trust, but I'm having more serious conversations now than I had even imagined back in September. God is at work!

Since my last post, many wonderful things have happened in RUF at USF. Here are a few!

 

We had a retreat at Lake Placid the second weekend of November. Notice that we are all wearing swimsuits and/or shorts. Some students swam! I'm still amazed by this. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by the pervasive heat with a name like "South Florida," but still!

Lake placid is known for its murals all throughout town, so our weekend was not complete without a photo scavenger hunt.

We all made Tie-dyed shirts during the weekend, then sported them at the next large-group. How festive!

We had a tacky Christmas sweater party, with games, gingerbread house building, gift exchanging, caroling, Christmas story reading and...

the introducing of oranges and old-fashioned peppermint sticks. As you can see, I found at least one fan! Though the critics were many, almost everyone loved this Carroll family Christmas tradition once they tried it. :)

I also held a few focus groups just for girls to talk about relationships, dating, sex, and marriage, as that's what our topic in large group has been for the semester. I don't have any pictures of those. Suffice to say that the students were wonderfully accommodating--they all brought pillows and blankets to stay comfortable on my wood floors; I didn't have any furniture at that point! This event really showed me how much God is constantly at work. Beforehand, I was mixed between thinking no one would actually show up (because no one had completed the RSVP! Life with students!), and being absolutely terrified at the questions students might ask me. Well, show up they did. I was actually intimidated by how many girls were sitting around me waiting to hear me talk when we got started. God really does supply the words, though! We had healthy, edifying discussions each week, despite my lack of wisdom.

Monday, finals begin for the students, so beyond a few meetings with students who aren't too stressed out, I'll be baking delicious things and camping out in a central place in campus. My goal is to get these students to see the sun and take a moment to breathe and laugh in the middle of the stress. I can't believe my first semester as an RUF intern is wrapping up. It has been a joy, and I'm so glad God has placed me here.

This is not a real update.

It's fake. No, really, it's just inappropriately short. It's getting late here in Florida, and I'm about ready to call it a night. However, I don't have internet at home right now, so I'm taking advantage of it while I can. That's why I'm going to keep this short and sweet!

So much has happened since my last post!

I found a roommate, and apartment, and moved into a new place that's about 5 minutes from campus. Perfect! We're taking a trip to ikea tomorrow morning to stock up. :)

Me and my roomie, Gaby. So thankful for her!

We went on a moonlight canoeing excursion. (complete with glowsticks tied to the front of the canoe!)

We had countless other events and dinners...

A freshmen dinner--what a great crowd!

I got to see my dear friend Amanda, twice!

And we had a fantastic halloween party with an excellent turn out!

I was Mary Poppins! Such fun.

The winners of our costume contests

Some of the delicious food our creative students made!

It was a wonderful night, and a good time was had by many. It's wonderfully encouraging that new students are still turning up to RUF events even though it's November already. What's more, I'm really starting to see and get to help my students really wrestle through who Jesus is and what the gospel means for their life. A college campus is an excellent place to really dive into some deep questions--if only I could make you a fly on the wall of our freshmen bible study. Today we got into a hefty discussion of prayer and whether prayer actually changes anything. That's just a sample of what I've been up to. Hopefully it won't be another month before I post again! Until then...

Thankful Post

You read it right, folks, today it's time for a thankful post. At RUF staff training over the summer, they warn all of us newbie interns of the perils we are soon to face. They warn us that we will be shocked by the weird differences of our new campuses. That we may not get along very well with our new campus minister at first. That we might feel profoundly lonely in the beginning. That students may never respond to our attempts to befriend and invest in them. In short, they warn us that we may question this whole thing, even after sweating out an awkward, tension-filled summer of support raising with deep desires to get to campus. I can't predict the future, so I'm not going to write all of this off from here on out, but I can assure you that no such complaint is on my mind right now. Thank you, Lord. Instead, here's what's been going on.

1) My campus: it's different. Very different. My students are very diverse in many ways (where they're from, economic backgrounds, religious upbringing, and personality), and the campus itself is about as opposite as it can be from my undergrad school. I mean, students use "long boards" (longer skateboards) to get around quite often. Never spotted a single one of those in bulldog territory. Yet with all of its differences, I do love it. It's an instructive, stretching difference for me, and it gives me a front row seat to see how God is working, because I'm officially 100% out of my league. God really does work through our weaknesses, and He has plenty of opportunity with me, as I am just as inexperienced at USF as the freshmen I'm meeting with.

2) My campus minister: ROCKS. Jeff and Jenny have welcomed me with open arms in more ways than I can express. It has been a joy to get to know them and their families, to work day in and day out with them, and to be encouraged by their strength and stamina in this hectic time of the semester. They know how to lean on God for strength and energy, and not a day goes by that I'm not thankful for that. That's not to mention the fact that Jenny and I love so many of the same things. It's going to be a good two years.

3) Feeling lonely: no, not really. Thank you, Reinke family. I can't say enough how grateful I am for them. They treat me like I'm one of the family, and it has made my experience completely different than it would have been. After a rocky "host family" experience in Spain, I'm floored. I was struck by the odd blessing of it all yesterday as we rode to Apopka to tube and celebrate many birthdays (Jeff and Jenny and their kids). A month later, here I am, IN TAMPA (a place that brought no mental pictures to my mind a mere month ago), piled into their family car just like that's normal for them (to have 3 girls around instead of 2, I mean). That's not to mention the roomie that I found: we're hoping to find a place together soon! I got to celebrate her birthday with her last night, and I think we will be fast friends. What's more, people have been connecting me with other folks in Tampa, and I've been able to meet people at my church and otherwise, thereby beating back loneliness almost entirely. Even though I'm in a place where I knew absolutely no one a few weeks ago. Who would have thought? God's gracious provision, to be sure.

4) My students: they respond. Well, most of the time. Which is saying a lot for college students! Again, I have to emphasize how much I can see God working in who is becoming involved in RUF at this point. It is such a blessing.

To the tune of students, fall conference was wonderful. Except for some storming, we had a great weekend of bonding, God's Word, and silly activities. More to come on that.

Last bit: I'm thankful for church. I've started a women's bible study on Tuesday mornings, and it has been a blessing so far. Many people have reached out to me, to meet me and encourage me in the past few weeks. I walked into the fellowship hall to see a large bulletin board full of RUF at USF, for goodness' sakes! (Complete with a rather large picture and explanation of me and what I do.) Yet again, my expectations were blown out of the water in regards to church life. This morning was an encouraging  picture of how heaven will be one day: all of God's people worshipping in joy together. Indeed, this will be. (Did I ever get around to explaining my blog title? It has much to do with this very sentiment!) Our hope is real and secure in Christ's return and our futures in glory with Him! So. It was a long "thankful post", and I could keep going, but I will spare you. As a congratulations for reading it all, here are some pictures. Thank you for your prayers, one and all.

Some of the girls at fall conference

Surprise celebration of Jeff's (campus minister) birthday after large group two weeks ago

Go bulls! My first USF game. What fun! Even though we lost. :( 

We had a great group of students there! Very spirited, as you can see!