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!