Thank you all so much for your thoughts & prayers during this busy & crucial time for us. Our fall launch went efficiently and smoothly. Some unpleasant details & red tape got worked out, and we connected with several eager first year students!
A quick recap ...
√ Orientation Week ("O Week") - August 21-30
√ Sunday, August 23 - Freshmen "Block Party"
Our sophomores came out strong for this one! We did a bunch of spiritual interest surveys (gauging the freshmen interest in reading the Bible). We gave out freezie-pops and gave out cards with info of our events during "O Week".
√ Tuesday, August 25 - Noon-3pm, Cornell Christian Fellowship Fair
We hung out in the beautiful, sunny, blue-skied day handing out more spiritual interest surveys and connecting with those that we had already seen that previous Sunday at the Block Party. Great weather; great turn out! Lots more surveys taken, and freezie-pops given out. An excellent turn out from our returning sophomores & juniors.
√ 4:30-5:30pm, Survey Follow-Up
We had a great group of motivated & excited sophomores come out with us to call up the freshmen we surveyed who recorded an interest in reading the Bible, etc! Unfortunately, the university had some freshmen events scheduled that we did not anticipate, but we still were able to connect with a few & give them our Nav backpacks with free stuff in them (i.e. playing card, new testament, candy, etc).
√ Wednesday, August 26 - 4pm, Ultimate Frisbee Game
We didn't have as many surveyed students show up as we had hoped. But it was a great opportunity to meet random freshmen interested in playing! We also had a good turn out from sophomore and junior students.
√ 7:30-Midnight, Survey Follow-up & Movie Night
Jeff (not his real name), whom I have been discipling for the last year, and I got together on Tuesday and planned a movie night with root beer floats for Wednesday night. We followed up surveys with another good crew and were able to connect with several freshmen men & women! And later that night we had 9 freshmen come to our movie night! Very encouraging.
√ Friday, August 28 - First Nav-Night
We had about 15 freshmen show up! Doug (campus director) spoke on The Navigator's calling statement, "To advance the gospel of Jesus and His kingdom into the nations through spiritual generations of laborers, living and discipling among the lost". Afterwards, we ate desserts provided by other Nav students, hung out and talked, and most students went down to an upperclassmen's apartment and we played the game Scene-it!. At this point we were a little shocked at how much these same freshmen have continued to show up at!
√ Saturday, August 29 - Ultimate Frisbee & Malts
Pretty simple, we played frisbee, and then got malts & milkshakes from a local joint. Not a lot of surveyed freshmen, but lots of random freshmen and a good turnout from upperclassmen.
√ Fast forward to Friday, September 6 - 2nd Nav-Night
I (Matt) spoke on the topic of "Lordship" from Luke 6:46-49. Our theme verse for the semester is from Colossians, the epistle that we will be studying all semester in our Bible studies:
(Sorry about the awkward photo; but you get the idea.)
Colossians 2:6-7 "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness." NIV We have our Nav-Night topics all extracted from this verse to guide our semester.
Thank you all, again, so much for laboring with us in prayer for Cornell, and specifically this incoming freshmen class! We are so encouraged to have a team of co-laborers wading into the harvest fields with us. We certainly have felt your prayers and the Lord's hand with us in these last few weeks.
M&L
P.S. Remember the raffle we were doing for the $100 gift card to Target, by guessing how many pieces of candy were in the jar? Well, the winner was only off by 1! There were 1,275 pieces of candy in the jar.
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