He must become greater…I must become less
March 3, 2008
what a night! we are off to a great start. please forgive my lack of capitalization, if you saw this keyboard, you´d totally understand.
for all the moms reading…we had spaghetti for dinner. when they announced that, tyler conrad cheered. i am glad the students realize that they won´t starve while we are here.
once we arrived today, we unloaded at score villa and made ourselves at home. we took a walk to the supermarket and loaded up on snack and water for the week. it was the costa rican walmart, and we were right at home!
after dinner, the students had some free time. i encouraged them to open up their iserve devotional and read day one before they came back for worship at 845pm. they enjoyed hanging out and relaxing. without divulging details, we have already jumped right in to some pretty serious conversations about life and particularly relationships…imagine in your mind lots of giggling!
we met for worship in the dining area at 845. kam willman, mc richmond, chaz henrick, sarah moore-ragusin, and ronnie brickner led us in worship tonight. i wish you could have heard all of our seniors lifting up their voices together in worship. there is just something about worshipping with students that continues to amaze me. i hope we never lose that wonder!
rachel adams wrote our devotion today based on john 3:30, ¨he must become greater: i must become less.¨ she was pretty open about the ways that God has been speaking to her heart lately about some things. she really challenged the group to be humble this week as we serve together.
hunter palmer also shared out of james 4 and told us some things he learned in his quiet time this morning and how it goes right along with what rachel said.
i asked the students to share what they were looking forward to this week. they shared all kinds of things…and then some of them shared about how they originally didn´t want to come, but came anyway. they realize that God has big plans for them this week. lee campbell, cassie carr, and i were able to share some stories from past trips to help them get prepared for what was coming their way. laura pater reminded them to focus on Christ. megan eskew said that we need to spend time tonight preparing to do battle for the Lord here in costa rica.
we shared for over an hour. it was a really encouraging time. i had all the students come and select a prayer partner for the week. they are supposed to pray for and encourage that person all throughout the week. at the end of the week, we´ll reveal who had who as their prayer partner.
after the last 2 songs, i dismissed our students to go to their rooms in silence to prepare for the week. lights out is at 11pm and we´ll probably all be asleep before that.
thanks for your prayers. God is definitely up to some amazing things here!
we are headed to help out at an orphanage in the morning. we´ll spend the afternoon ministering in a park and handing out tracts in san jose. tomorrow night we are handing out tracts to the 5,000 people who will be at the saprissa soccer game. will you join us in praying that God will use those tracts to bring people to salvation…please pray romans 1:16 for us.
i am headed to bed. i will write more soon.