Daniel Dialogue Ep: 1

The podcast hosts discuss their recent ministry activities, specifically focusing on an event called "First 10." "First 10" is a series of events held during the first 10 days of school to meet and connect with spiritually interested people. They recap some of the events, including a pancake breakfast, a puppies and popsicles gathering, and a glow-in-the-dark capture the flag game. They share stories of meeting new people and the positive impact of their ministry. They also mention some challenges, such as one of their student leaders getting injured during the capture the flag game. Despite the challenges, they express excitement and gratitude for the opportunity to serve in ministry. Hello everybody. I feel like we need a cool intro song. Oh, we can put one in there. We can definitely put one in there. Okay. How is everybody doing today? You can't answer me, but we are doing well. This is the podcast. We don't have a cool name for it. We thought about what the Daniel's Dialogue. Daniel's Dialogue. There's another couple that did stuff. They have a really great last name. It's like the Reynolds Recap, like that's nice. Yeah, I like that. Alliteration is always really nice for these things. We are here. I just wanted to give you guys a quick voice update, I suppose, on what's going on. Hopefully it'll help just keep you guys up to date with what we're doing in ministry. This is our first one, but we're going to just do a quick recap of first 10. Jenna, would you please explain to us what first 10 is? I would love to. For those of you who didn't read our last update email, we have three seasons of ministry at our church, specifically in the college ministry. We've got Go Wide, Go Deep, and Go Now. They all sound like what they are. Go Wide is the season that we've just kicked off with first 10, which is the season where we are going as wide as we can to meet as many people as possible to sift to find the people who are actually interested in forming deep connections with the people in our ministry. Basically, first 10 is that we have events for the first 10 days of school, large events that we invite people to to try to meet and sift for spiritually interested people. Yeah, it was a blast. It was very long, and we're just very tired. We just got done. I have a fever. Yeah, we're recording this. Jenna has a fever. I think I'm starting to get sick, but we made it through first 10 before we got sick, which was the goal, according to Justin. We're doing pretty well, but we just wanted to go through a quick recap of what the first 10 days look like, just some stories of things we experienced during first 10, and just some really neat things that the Lord has been doing. I will allow Jenna to start. Day one, we did pancakes at O'Hill. Jenna, what was pancakes at O'Hill? Pancakes at O'Hill is one of our famed traditions. I say that. We've been a church plant for five years. Ages. Ages and ages. Basically, we take a bunch of riddles, and we all basically just set up tables and make pancakes at O'Hill, which is a dining hall that's smack in the middle of all of the first-year dorms. As people are walking to different functions, some people have hangouts for clubs. Some people are going to parties near the frat houses. Everybody, there's foot traffic going back and forth. We set up at 930, and we're just handing out pancakes, trying to meet people. We probably handed out several hundred pancakes. Some went to 200. There were probably more than that. It was wild. We had gluten-free pancakes. I think there were four people total, and me and Keaton and my best friend Marley were three of the four people. One girl was very happy. She was extremely happy. It was a really cool time. We met a ton of, like Jen said, first-years who had just moved in. O'Hill is right near all the first-year dorms. There was just a ton of people that had moved in that day or the day before that we got to get connected with and got to meet. All of our student leaders, while all of staff was making the pancakes, the student leaders were kind of mingling in the crowd, just trying to talk with people. Can I interject my favorite story? Yes. This is a free one. We hadn't planned it, but one of my favorite stories. All of the student leaders were all prepping, getting everything ready. We just look over, and unprompted, all of our student leaders are just in a circle praying, asking God to bring as many people as He could to our pancake night, and asking that He would just use it to change people's lives. I was like, that is so cool, that they are just taking personal responsibility for this ministry. Yeah, we didn't even order them to pray. Unprompted prayer. The spirit was moving. It was incredible, but yeah, we had a great time. Before that, a cool story that I mentioned in the support letter was that me and Jose, another guy on staff, we were walking around just trying to meet people, and we were playing spike ball. This guy recognized, Jose was wearing a Center Church shirt, and the guy recognized it. He was like, oh, you guys are from Center Church. I'm going to go to that church. Me and Jose were like, what? You're just going to go? You're what? Yeah, this is awesome. I really wanted to meet with you guys, because my friend told me about you, and this is the college ministry I want to be a part of. Me and Jose were literally out there trying to meet people, convince them to come and join Center College. He was like, I'm already convinced. Who are you guys? It was just really cool to see the Lord had just already prepared that guy, and had been working, even though me and Jose hadn't even talked to him yet. He was already convinced. Stuff like that, there's so many cool stories. You're discipling him this year, right? Yeah, I'm going to spend some time with him, and just disciple him. We're just super excited for him to get plugged in and stuff. It's really neat. There's so many different stories that we could tell you guys. Honestly, the 10 days felt like it lasted months. We were on a two-month-long mission trip to UVA. Yeah, for 10 days. It was wild, and that was really fun. That was Monday, Monday night? Yep, Monday night. Monday night, yeah. Then on Tuesday, we did a thing called puppies and popsicles. We also had an ice cream bar later that day. That was just a chance. We had people from the church actually bring their dogs, just families from the church, and then their kids to the local nearby field park area where all the college students hang out. We just gave away free popsicles, and college students could pet the dogs. It was just a really cool opportunity to just meet college students once again as they kind of walked by and got to talk with a lot of people, had a lot of really good conversations. It was really cool seeing just multi-generational people from the church, like babies. A couple of our elders were there. Yeah, one of our pastor's elders were there. One of the elders' dog without him. That's right. Yeah, we took a dog, that weird dog thing, to the park. That was a really good time. You know, like I said, just another chance for the student leaders and also staff to get connected with people. The third day was, this was, what day was this? This was Sunday. Sunday, yeah, that's right. Sunday, we had church. We had church on Sunday. Basically, we were doing a tailgate that day. We had planned to do it for both Sundays. We'll get into that later, but yes. The first Sunday, basically, we were passing out bagel breakfast sandwiches in the backyard. Honestly, it was really fun. We met a lot of people. Yeah. We met a lot of people there, and we hung out after church. Then that night, we went and we played glow in the dark, capture the flag. When I tell you that I have never seen more people that no one knows show up to an event, it was crazy. I think we have, how many contacts did we leave? It was like 40. Yeah, it was like 40, yeah, 40 or 50. We were all having to text him afterwards, but yes, so many people came. That was the event that we had people, people who came the rest of the week, who probably aren't even interested in being a Christian or anything like that, but they were just having so much fun with us. Wow, yeah, capture the flag. This was great. We had an unfortunate incident there, which is- Fallen shoulder. Yeah, one of our student leaders, one of the guys, Rob, he unfortunately took a beating. Somebody was running past him, and he was trying to tag them. At the last second, they turned their head up really sharp and hit him in the face, and it busted his lip open. Me and Jenna at around, what is it, 930, probably that happened. We took him to the emergency room, and we were there until 2 a.m. Indeed. We spent at least three hours, closer to four hours in the emergency room with Mr. Rob, who was fine, but it was just a nasty cut, so he got the stitches. The stitches are already out, I think. Yeah, he's good. He's perfectly fine, but it was, I mean, it was really kind of like a funny thing, but also like a too bad thing, but also it's like a cool ministry opportunity, even just to Rob to be able to be with him during that and walk through him with that, because it's no fun to have to go to the emergency room by yourself until 2 a.m., so we had a good time with it. The soccer coach from UVA that coached the women's national team was there, so we were just sitting there with Steve Swanson, and we were like, hey. Yeah, Jenna, I couldn't see his face, and Jenna like pulled up a picture of him on her laptop, and I like looked up, and I was like, who is Steve Swanson, and then he like popped his head around the corner, because I said his name so loud, and then we got the whole conversation with him, so that was kind of neat and cool. Once again, just Lord's Providence thing. We got to talk with him for a while. Okay, so that was, let's see, that was Sunday into early Monday morning, so Monday we get home at 2 a.m., and then we go to sleep, and then we wake up and back at it. Jenna, let's see, we did spike ball that day, right? Yeah. Yeah, so that was Jenna's birthday. It was indeed, and we played my favorite game, spike ball, and catch the flag again. We were like, this is so successful. Let's see if anyone wants to come back, and they did. People were asking for it the night before. They were like, are you going to do this again, and we were like, well, why not? We might as well, and so we did a spike ball tournament that day. It was really cool just seeing like by the end of the tournament, we did it probably on like 530 to 730, somewhere in there, and by the end of the tournament, there's just obviously the two teams left, and it was just like people were lined up in a massive circle, random people who didn't even play spike ball, but that were just out there hanging out, watching the game, so that was a ton of fun, and we played capture the flag again that night, saw a ton of people come back, get connected again, and just it was a really exciting time, but Jenna has a cool story, I think, from that one. So I did not watch the spike ball tournament. I didn't even realize, I mean like I knew it had started kind of, but one of my really close friends, who's a student leader, was struggling, I think, just there's a lot of different things, and so I went over to check on her, and we ended up having a conversation for like the entire tournament. It's like an hour, hour and a half, and I think the most encouraging thing for me from that was just like remembering that like friendship is ministry. I think I get in my head a lot about needing to like meet with lost people, meet with people who have questions, meet with people who are seeking, but I think this was really good for me to just remember that like even though I'm not like sharing the gospel with someone who doesn't know it, I'm still like preaching the gospel to somebody who needs to hear it, and I mean who does believe it, but needs to be reminded of it, and just like friendship, like Jesus is our friend, like Romans talks about that, but yeah, we are now made friends of God, and so I think that that was just a really cool thing for me to do, just to be able to be someone's friend and remind myself that that is biblical, too. Yeah, that was really encouraging. It's a really cool thing to see, yeah, because those student leaders, same thing with Rob, being able to go to the emergency room with him and just encourage them because they were out there all 10 days. All 10 days with us laboring alongside us fighting the good fight. That's right, they were doing awesome, so we're really proud of them. And then the next day was Parking Deck Trivia, which was my event that I was in charge of. It was very fun for what it was, you know, Parking Deck Trivia. Honestly, it was really cool. Basically, we just like brought a bunch of speakers up onto the top of the parking deck, and that was like a smaller event. It had, I mean, I want to say between 30 and 40 people, like a good amount of people. Basically, it was just like building deeper connections, so all of those people had been invited by somebody they knew. There wasn't a random person that had shown up, so it was more so like friendship building, relationship building, but there were lots of people that joined us, and so they got to just see what it was like to be around Christians and just having conversation. It was really cool. Every single student leader was like mixed up in different groups, and so there wasn't a group of people who didn't have a student leader with them, and so that was really cool to see that they were just like stepping out of their comfort zone, like not just being with their friends, but being with people who they like didn't necessarily know so well, so that was really cool. Yeah, that was really cool. So, it was Tuesday, Wednesday. We did, it was kind of, that evening was a little bit of an off day for us. We, me and Jenna, got to, what did we end up doing that evening? We went on a date or something, I think. What did we do? It feels like so long ago now. It was like less than a week ago, but that afternoon, we went, and we went on campus, and we got those griddles back out, and we served hot dogs, and it was very hard getting off the ground. I will admit we had to move spots, I think like four times, because we set up the table, and then there, then there was no outlet, so we had to move to a different spot, but then they're like, no, you're blocking a, like a fire escape exit, so you need to move to another spot, and we had to move up a hill, and finally, we nailed the spot after getting everything off the ground, and it ends up being a really cool thing. People just walk into class, could pick up a free hot dog. We told them about our, our campus ministry, and everything that we were doing, and yeah, it was really awesome. People were really happy about it. We had a professor come by, because a bunch of the students in our class had a hot dog, and then she was like, it made me want a hot dog so bad, and so she came up and got a hot dog, which was just really funny, and really cool. We had to share with her once again what we were up to, and so yeah, super kind of unique thing, and I think the people really liked it. Let's see, so that was Wednesday. Thursday, we once again were out, you know, on grounds pretty much all day, and then that evening, we had our big college event, CCU, that we have every Thursday night at eight o'clock at the church, so that's kind of our big college worship event, and so I thought, I thought it went really well. We invited, I think we texted around 250 to 300 people, and like invited them, so that was just people we had connected with from all the other events throughout the week, people we had met personally, or that the student leaders had got to meet personally, and so it was just really cool. We didn't see, obviously, see everybody come, because a lot of people were busy, or just uninterested in coming to a big event like that, but I think we saw nearly 80 people show up to CCU. Yeah, something like that. I don't remember the number, but it was, it was probably one of the biggest CCUs we had. Yeah, I think so, which was really cool, and we got to have a lot of really cool conversations. I think Jenna got to have a really neat one with a girl. Yeah, so we actually had, I had met this girl from Afghanistan, and she went to RMA, so if you know me, you know that I'm from Front Royal, and there's not a lot there, but there is a military academy, Randolph-Macon Academy, and she had gone there after her brother had died in a bombing in Afghanistan, and we had met the hot dog day, and gotten to share, me and one of the student leaders, the student leader got to share the gospel with her, and it was really cool just to watch her kind of come out of her shell to share with her, but it was also just really cool to see how the Afghani girl responded. She is very much in like a, like a neutral state of like, Islam, Christianity, they have a lot in common, and so we kind of left that being like, I don't know, but we had invited her to CCU, and to the hike that we did later in the week, and she was like, I don't know, I'll pick one of them, and I'll come to one of them, so we didn't really know where, you know, which one she would come to, but then that night, she actually showed up, and she brought one of her other friends from Afghanistan, so it was really cool to just see the nations just be brought to, brought to CCU, and we did roller skating in the parking lot afterwards, and they were just laughing and having a great time, so I was just really encouraged by our student leader that helped invite her, and just that the Lord, yeah, would bring somebody who's just been through a lot of really like tough hardship, just like to a place where like people love her and care for her, so that was just really exciting to me. Yeah, no, it was really, really cool. We saw a ton of people come that were just, it was really neat seeing all those different people, and people that were, some of them were just straight up uninterested in anything having to do with church, but they still. But they liked the roller skating. They did like the roller skating, so that was fun. Okay, so then Friday, we did floats and line dancing. It was kind of a similar thing to trivia. We didn't expect, like we didn't set up anywhere where we'd meet a lot of new people, but rather the people that had already gotten connected with us, we invited them to that, and we once again, probably the same amount as we had at trivia, like 40 to 50 people showed up, which was a lot for line dancing, and they all danced really hard. I mean, we did like group beer floats and stuff like that on one of our students has like a college house with some friends, and so we had it in his front yard. But basically, yeah, it was really fun. It was really cool, and yeah, we had a blast. Like I said, we got to see some new people, so Jenna once again had met a girl earlier in the week. Yeah, I had met her that day before. The day before, yeah, she had come to CCU. She came to CCU, and it was really cool because she currently goes to a really small Reformed church, so she's the only college student at. It's like 40 minutes away, so she essentially has no community during the week, but on Sunday, someone comes and picks her up, but she's from England, and she is a Christian, and it was really cool to kind of show her that not, she like basically was like, I thought all contemporary churches were like sugarcoating stuff, and she's like, but your pastor was super direct. But yeah, she came to the floats and line dancing party, and it was really cool to just watch her just like, you know, have a good time with other Christians. She was saying that at her home church, there were only two other people her age. I think one of them was one of her siblings or something, so she just was like excited, I think, to be around believers her age, and she signed up for a discipleship group, so we'll see if that actually pans out, but it was really cool just to see her kind of like step out of her comfort zone as far as like secondary issues go to like maybe even tertiary, just issues where it's like, we all love the Lord. Come hang out with us and enjoy fellowship together. Yeah, that was a blast, and it was really cool seeing her just, yeah, kind of let loose, and we all line danced a lot. We did the, what was it, Copperhead Road. They kept calling it the Oklahoma Special, but we literally learned it five minutes before, and it was hard. For all the Oklahoma people, I have done that before, but I'd forgotten it, and then I couldn't remember it, so it did not go very well, but everyone had a good time. Let's see, so that was Friday night. Saturday, this was this past Saturday, we did a rock, or a rock hike. A rock hike. A rock hike, and not a sand hike or any other type of hike. We hiked Humpback Rock. Yes. Luke Gaines was lost here. That's right. This is the same rock that Luke Gaines got lost at, if you guys know him, but anyway, basically, we had a good time. That was really, really fun. We just took a group of college students out. Whoever wanted to come could come out with us and hike, and we took the dog again, so that was good for the dog, but anyway, once again, Jenna got to connect with the girl that she had invited, which was really cool, I think. No, I think Aaron invited her, but same different. One of my favorite things about hiking is just the conversations you get to have. Her family, her dad is Hindu, and her mom became a Christian in the last seven years, and her brothers, I think just one brother actually, her and her brother were saved, but they don't go to church when they're at home just because of family persecution kind of things, and she was just talking about how excited she was to be at the church in college and excited to grow in her faith. It was really cool getting to share with her about my life and the things that I've been through and to kind of have her do the same thing, and that's just one of the best things about hiking. Yes, you get into a lot of really good conversations. Me and Jenna went on a very long hike on our honeymoon, longer than I expected it to be. Four miles. I was like, four miles isn't that bad, and then like a mile in, I was like, why did we decide to do this? This is the worst thing ever, but we made it through, so that was fun, and then finally, let's see, so that was Saturday, Sunday. We were going to do another cookout like we had done the Sunday before with the breakfast sandwiches right after church until I get everything set up out there, and then it just starts downpouring on us, like not in the weather forecast or anything like that, and so it was just a wild Sunday of just like running around trying to figure things out, trying to save the food that was outside because everything was already set up, but we ended up having, I don't even know how many college students. I should have counted the picture. It had to be probably 50 to 60. Yeah, Justin said it was the largest Sunday attendance of college students. Yeah, it was absolutely crazy, and we just did some donuts. We had to move inside. Obviously, we couldn't do a cookout because it was raining, but we moved everything inside, and I was soaking wet. Dripping everywhere. Yeah, I was just so wet. It looked like I jumped into the swimming pool, but it was a blast, and the college students really enjoyed it, and so yeah, it was really cool, and that kind of concluded first 10, and we were really tired, so we were happy that we went, and we got food with my family who had come for church, and then we went to sleep. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, we hung out with some friends that night too, but yeah, that was a really fun time, and first 10, like we kind of talked about in our letter, it was just a real blessing from the Lord, I think, to be able to really start off doing college ministry just with going full speed ahead, giving it 100%. We're really tired. Our bodies are really tired, but I think we're really full of all the Lord did and how many people we met. It was just amazing to see all that the Lord was going to do in that, and we're looking forward to all that he's going to continue to do. Hopefully, some of the people that we meet during first 10, they can look back on that first week of school where that random person just walked up to them on the sidewalk and was like, hey, you want to join Center College as the moment where their lives kind of got shifted, and they got plugged into the local church and their lives got changed. I know each of us probably have a story similar to that of how the Lord used somebody, just stepping out and asking us a question to change our lives. Anyway, very exciting. Jenna, do you have any final closing thoughts? I don't think so. Okay, very cool. Well, great. We wanted to keep it pretty short for you guys so that it wasn't just like a three-hour long Joe Rogan podcast on first 10. If you want one, we'll make a Patreon. Exclusive content. That's right. Extra $5 a month. Jenna sleeps talking for three hours. That's true. She does do that. She sleeps a lot. Anyway, thank you guys for listening. Like I said in the email, we just got married, so if you guys have any marriage advice, please send us an email or text message. You probably all have our phone numbers anyway. Jenna's looking at me like she's very confused. I don't think she realized that. No, no. I saw that. I added this in, but we would love your marriage advice or any other advice you guys have. Send us an encouragement or anything like that, and please be praying for us. We need it all the time. Yeah. Big, big prayer request. Be praying for Blue Mountain Weekend, which is coming up in like three weeks. It's our fall retreat, and that is really where relationships are solidified, and so all these people that we have met, this is where they get really serious about walking with the Lord, walking with the church, and so just be praying that a lot of people would sign up for that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Thank you guys very much. We will talk to you next month for sure, so.