What a Faithful God we Serve

I have now officially been in Wildwood two weeks! Since students arrived on June 1, time has been flying by.. literally! We have 60 wonderful students here and it has been great getting to know everyone! God has been so faithful to these students already! The first night they were here almost 20 students (33% of the project) got jobs! This was after them being here for literally a few hours! As of today I believe all but 4 students have jobs! How great is our God?? At this point last year, a lot more than 4 students were still in search for jobs and we even had about 15 less students last year than this year. Before the students arrived we were praying that God would hand pick these jobs for the them and provide for them so I am super excited to see what he has in store in the workplace which we call their mission field :) 


I can't remember if I have introduced them before or not but I have four amazing girls in my small group: Elise, Jenna, Kenscia, and Lia! We also have sweet Ellen who is a staff mom who is joining us in our small group and hosting us at her home here in Wildwood :) We had window to the soul the other night which is basically where we all share our testimonies with one other.. the good, the bad, and the ugly.. and we see where we have been and where God has brought us to. It was amazing hearing all of the girl's stories and I am sooo excited to see what God has in store for each and everyone of them this summer! I know he has some amazing plans in store for each of their lives! We are all so very different in many aspects but then so very much a like in other aspects. 


Yesterday we had our first outreach as a complete project! Students were trained on Solarium, Perspective Cards, Surveys, and the KGP. After the training, we all went out sharing on the boardwalk. It has been kinda chilly up here the past few days so the boardwalk has not had all that many people on it but some students still got into some really great conversations with people on the boardwalk. One of the biggest things we are advocating for students is teaching them how to simply listen to what people have to say. As Christians, we are typically sterotpyed as pushing our beliefs on others without ever listening to what they have to say. We typically don't allow the Holy Spirit to actually lead us into conversations, we push right into it and sometimes, yes that is effective, but a lot of times it is not. The Spirit has to be at work in that person's heart opening them up to what He has to say through us. Yesterday my roommate Caroline and I went out sharing together and ended up talking to a guy that works in one of the stores on the boardwalk. We started out just talking about what we were doing here in New Jersey, he knew we weren't from here because I dropped the "y'all" bomb hahah that is always a giveaway. Anyways after telling him why we were here he just began to tell us about his life and really opened up more and more to us the longer we talked to him. We ended up talking to him for about 45 minutes. We were simply LISTENING to him, we weren't pushing our beliefs on him, we weren't interrupting him every few seconds but we were letting him talk and tell us about himself. He told us that he didn't grow up in a Christian family but had a friend who was a Christian and at one point got curious about Faith and went to church with his friend. He had a few different experiences in his life that he believed was completely God's doing but still wasn't exactly ready for a personal relationship with God. He said that he felt selfish just asking for God for things when he needed something or was in trouble. That is kind of where that conversation went and ended because he had to get back to work but we told him we would definitely come back and talk to him. On the way back to our project house, Caroline and I began praying for him and just asking the Lord to be at work in his life and to help us as a project to truly love on him and show Jesus' love to him. Later that night I got a text from one of my girls in my small group saying that my friend that I had met earlier was on the porch talking to a group of them and just literally pouring his heart out to them. He talked with them for like an hour and a half and they prayed for him before he left. God is definitely at work in his life and to me, it is no coincidence that he ended up walking by our project house. He had no idea where we lived, he had just walked to a convenience store and him and his friend were walking back to their house and happened to be walking on our road and some of our guys started talking to them and got them to come over to the porch to talk. If that was not an example of God specifically putting him on that road at that time, I do not know what is. I was pretty mind blown and so excited to see God already so at work with just our first day of outreach. You can definitely join my team and myself in praying for this guy, his name is Chaz. Thank you so much for your prayers!


Here are a few pictures for you :)

Myself and two others are responsible for the food on project when we have meetings that have food and for our weekly project dinner. This is how much paper products it takes to feed nearly 100 people haha

This is my roomie Amanda and I trying to fit all of the paper products and food in a car. We literally had bags all around our feet, bodies, and stacked up on our lap. People literally had to unpack us out of the car haha

This is the famous boardwalk where I worked last year!

This is my small group I am leading :)

We had women's time the other night on the beach. We played capture the flag and right after we finished playing high tide came in higher than I ever remember from last year. It looked like a lake! haha