Daniel Dialogue Ep: 3

The Daniel dialogue is back with episode 3 after a month-long break. Daniel taught at the Center College United event about the Ninth Commandment and had a positive experience. They also tried out different after parties, including pumpkin carving and a gingerbread house competition. They attended a conference on mobilizing college students for evangelism on campuses. They learned about discipleship and igniting a heart for missions. They have seen growth and openness in the students they lead. They are looking forward to a season of rest and have plans to vacation in Boston and spend time with family in Oklahoma. They mentioned Winter Conference, hosted by their church, and hope to increase the number of students attending. They are excited for fellowship and fun memories. Hello everybody, you're back with the Daniel dialogue. This is episode 3. We're sorry we have not gotten to you in the past month or two. This is going to be just like a review over the past couple months, October and November, and then also this will just kind of finalize our end of year time together. So we've had a really eventful couple months. It's been a lot of fun. In November I got to teach at our Center College United, which is our Thursday night event. I got to teach over the Ninth Commandment, which is you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. It was a really awesome time, great opportunity of just growth for me. I was really nervous to get up on stage and talk in front of around 50 people or so and give like a 30 minute long sermon, but I thought it went really, really well and a couple of the students had some difficulties, which actually directly pertained to what I talked about, and they were able to reconcile on that front, which is just really cool to hear about, honestly. Yeah, you did a really good job. The students you were talking about, they came and told me afterwards, and I was like, wow, that's super awesome. God just is using, even when we're just nervous about things and feel like, did I even do a good job doing that? God is using it, and you did do a good job. Something else that's been really fun this semester, so we've been trying out different after parties, so to speak, after CCU. Typically we have the students just go to cookout and hangout, but we did a couple different ones this semester. We did pumpkin carving, and we also did a gingerbread house competition, which both of them were super fun, but I think the gingerbread house competition was kind of the big hit. One of the coolest things, there was a student who was at the gingerbread house making competition, had to leave to go pick her friend up. She was just going to skip it. She was like, all right, well I guess I have to go, or not skip it, but she was just leaving early. Yeah, to go get her friend who was working, so she stayed for a little bit, went to go get her friend who was working, brought her friend back, even though they missed basically the whole thing. So they just came for the judging and then the afterwards conversation, and they stayed for a long time, and then next week came back for the event we did the next week. So that was really cool, just getting to see the Lord use fun stuff like that to bring people into the community. Yeah, it's been really, really fun, and Jenna did a great job. Also, Jenna is sick, if you can't tell her, her nostrils have been clogged up recently, which is just too bad. I think the 5,000 children at our church is getting everybody sick. There are so many kids with runny noses and stuff running around. Green slime. Another thing that we did this past month in November was we went to a conference with the North American Mission Board. Specifically, it was about mobilizing college students to evangelize on college campuses. So it was an awesome opportunity. I shared a picture in our update of all of us residents who got to go and just hear from these teachers who have spent 40-plus years all together in college ministry, ministering to college students, and mobilizing those college students to disciple other college students. That's what it was all about. It was really, really awesome. There were a lot of great takeaways. We had to stop and consider, because there were so many things we were like, oh, that's a great idea. We want to use that. We want to do that. We were like, we can't change our entire ministry strategy. Halfway through the year. Halfway through the year, yeah. But it was just super helpful, a lot of helpful tips. I think the big thing for us moving forward was probably our biggest takeaway is like how do we really ignite that heart for missions on college campuses, specifically at UVA, and live that out ourselves so that the college students are kind of being brought alongside of that. I think the biggest way that one guy explained it was like when you're discipling somebody, you aren't just pouring into them, but actually you're asking them to come alongside you. So you say, while I'm doing this thing, come and learn from me how I'm doing it. That's a big part of our job is discipleship. I think that personal evangelism, that personal heart for college campuses, and then allowing that to kind of bring alongside these other college students that we're trying to train up in the same way, and allowing that to actually disciple them. That was probably my biggest takeaway from that, which was just, it was an incredible conference, I don't know. Yeah, it was. Yeah. So that's been really, really fun, an awesome time. This semester has been really, I think fruitful. We've seen a lot of the college students, just a lot of growth from college students in sin, in sin struggles and areas and places that have been difficult. I've seen just a lot of, at least my guys that I've been discipling, just work to gain purity in life and in how they're walking with the Lord, and then just to get those sin struggles and follow Him. So that's been really a big blessing. Yeah, and for me I just feel like, I've seen the girls that I lead just opening up a lot more. A lot of the girls I lead, I didn't know very well walking into the school year. Even today, I just had a really meaningful conversation with a student where she just shared with me some stuff that's really difficult. She was like, I should have shared this with you months ago, but I just wasn't ready to. And I think it's just been really cool to watch the Lord deepen our friendships and just give us this sense of they can come to me to tell me about things, and I can tell them about things that are going on in our lives. And so I just, yeah, I've been really grateful for that as the semester's been closing up and reflecting back on where we were at the beginning and being like, wow, we have come a long way. Yeah, I feel like that also just helps me and how I'm looking forward to, because I feel like the same thing as we both kind of, well, I came in, at least you kind of knew them a little bit. Yeah, you came in blind. I came in blind. Who are these people? And now I feel like I've gotten to know them. We hang out quite a bit. And they're about to come over in like 10 minutes. Yeah, they're going to come over and hang out tonight while Jenna does a movie night with some of the other girls. But it's been, yeah, it's been an awesome thing, and it makes me just really look forward to continuing to build that closeness and like I mentioned, that just the discipleship relationship. So yeah, we're really looking forward to that. And then a big part of obviously finishing up this semester has been looking forward to the future of ministry. And so a big part of that is we're about to go into a season of rest. Yeah, we are about to rest hard. Our boss is always like, you work really hard and then you rest really hard. So just, yeah, working like 60 weeks and just grinding it out on the hours, just, you know, spending time with college students, making content, all the things that, you know, we like have to do for our job. And then yeah, just three weeks of just nothing. Yeah. Not just nothing, but you know, doing things that aren't work. And so we're really excited. We're going to, we're going to go to Boston for a couple days, a little vacation before we go spend a couple weeks with Keaton's family in Oklahoma, and then we'll come back and spend some time with my family and then we'll get right back at it. That's right. Yeah. We're really looking forward to that. I think it'll just be a great time of, of resting deeply. And honestly, it'd just be fun getting to hang out with everybody and see, see our family and see your family and spend time with them. So yeah, next semester, as far as ministry stuff goes, which of course you guys will hear more about this as we, as we continue on and I'm sure we'll talk in more detail about all this stuff. But one big thing we're looking forward to that you guys might be able to be praying for is we have something called Winter Conference coming up. So the church that planted our church is the Summit Church out of Raleigh, North Carolina. And they host a big conference for all of the college students from the church plants that they, that they planted, which is over, have they planted over a hundred churches now? It's a worldwide, so they have not all, obviously not all. Yeah. I was going to number, I want to say 40. It's, it's in between 40 and a hundred. Yeah, maybe not that many, but their goal is to plant a lot of churches. A thousand in a generation. A thousand in a generation. Yeah. And so we're, we're a part of that. And so we're going to take all of our college students down to Raleigh for a weekend of just getting to, to hang out with other college students, get to know people and just worship and teaching. And so we're wanting, I think, what was our goal today? 30, 35, 32. Very odd number, but that's our, that's our goal. Our goal is to get 32 students to come with us. And last year we had like about 21, I think. So we're looking at, we're looking to increase the amount of students that come. I'm secretly hoping that we can get 40 to come, but that's because I'm a dreamer. Ultra optimist. Yeah. And so we're looking forward to that. I think that'll be a really, really fun time of just fellowship. Some of my favorite memories from college were driving down. Honestly, the car ride is like the best part, but you just go with your D group and you're like, we're going to go to this conference. The conference is great and all, but yeah, just the, the like fellowship and they're like hanging out. Staying in hotel rooms. Staying in hotel rooms together. It's just so fun. And so we're just really excited and hoping that people will join us. Especially new students. This is how you get in. Like there's a student last year who was like super on the fringes for probably her first semester. Came to WinCon that she was like, Oh, I feel like I'm really a part of this now. Now she's a student leader leading on a group. And it's like, that's, I mean, not only because she went to WinCon, but like God really used the friendship she made in WinCon to help her. And I feel like that's probably the biggest, like the biggest strength of our group right now. And especially of our church is just like that community aspect. I felt like if people can see and experience the community, even that our college students have right now, it's like, that's the biggest hook. They want into that. And I think that that's a good, I mean, that's how Christ commands us to be. That's how the world will know that we are his disciples by the way that we love one another. So that's, we're really looking forward to that in the future. And then I think we've been ramping up for City Project. Yeah. Oh yeah. We just got handed all our roles today and we're super excited. I'm on one of my roles is the binder. I was one of my, my treasure, my treasured possessions when I went, when I did City Project. I still have it to this day. And yeah, so we, so basically we have just been doing conversations with the students, talking to them about what City Project is, how to pray about it. You know, if they like, you know, talking through follow-ups of like, okay, you prayed around it, like where's the Lord leading you, how to get involved in the next step. Yeah. And just for those who may not have read our email yet, City Project is our like summer long project for students to basically just, it's a, what do we call it? All intensive, all intensive discipleship program. It's a summer long thing where we, they'll learn how they'll learn about missions and they'll learn about evangelism and discipleship and, and theology and just, just pretty much everything. And it is just, honestly, it's like a disciple camp for Christian wave. Yeah. It's very intense, but it is, it's a blast. And so, yeah, we'll, we'll all be working on that. Except for Jenna actually will probably not be working on City Project because once again, for those who may not have read our email yet, we are having a baby. Yeah. So I'll be out right at the time, like literally when it starts, I'll be out. So all the things I'm doing to prepare for it are so that other people can do the things for me actually, but I'm going to do all the prep work for them. Yeah. So we're, we're very excited for that, but yeah, Jenna will be, Jenna will be out for City Project, which is very sad, but also it's like bittersweet. Bittersweet. I'll miss you as a staff member, but also you're going to be a great mother. So, you know, it goes back and forth. Yeah. Can't have it all. Yeah. Can't have it all. So we're, we're really looking forward to that. And, uh, that's, I mean, that's pretty much all we want to update you guys on. Um, we're super excited and thankful for you all and how you guys have supported us, um, in prayer and just even, yeah, just being kind enough to invest in us, even with your, with your money, you know, and really have, we just can't explain how grateful we are that we get this opportunity to do ministry. Uh, we're really looking forward to the next, next semester and the next couple of years of just continuing on to invest in these college students. So thank you guys. Have a Merry Christmas, everybody. And to all a good night and a happy new year.