San Diego #8

San Diego Summer Project Grab Bag

Here's a bunch of stuff I'd love to share about summer project that I can't stretch into their own posts.

- My ministry team is the training team, and it's awesome. The t-team is basically one person in each small group who ends up leading the group. I think we started off a bit slow, as not many of us were familiar with spiritual DNA and how to lead a small group using it (1). The student-staff and staff with the t-team have been amazing in giving us tools to help lead, though. They led our on-campus Bible studies the first week we went on campuses, but handed it over to the t-team members in Week 2. So, even though the staff is leaving this week, we've been able to lead pretty well without them already. I don't know everybody on the t-team yet, but that'll hopefully come with about five weeks to go.

(1) D = Divine truth, N = Nurturing community, A = Apostolic mission. Ethan, our project director, actually introduced this to student leadership last year at Nebraska, but I don't know how many of us went with it. After seeing this work as well as it has in San Diego, even with students that we invite from UCSD and SDSU, I'm firmly behind it.

- Our team is from all around the country. The Denver Christmas Conference region is well represented, but we also have students from Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Kentucky, and about 10 to 15 from Arkansas. This just adds to how much I love the fact that we're from different places and backgrounds, yet we're here on the same mission.

- On a similar note, I've gotten to meet a surprising amount of pre-health students. After having so much trouble making a decision on what to do during the summer, I didn't think there'd be many pre-health people. I think there are at least ten of us, which includes pre-med, PT, nursing, and optometry. We all have similar career goals, and we're here on the same mission and have the same purpose in life, yet we're all so different in so many ways. One of the student-staff people, Jake, is also pre-med and had a similar, but crazier pre-project story than me - he committed to project about two days before staff arrived in San Diego. I'm just pumped that so many pre-health people are giving a summer to Christ!

- Our Wi-Fi is really choppy. It was actually pretty smooth when we first got it, but here's what happened: when we first got it, the setup was temporary, and the network had "TEMP" in its name. When it was changed to something more permanent, the new network got the word "SWAG" in its name, and it's been pretty inconsistent. That being said, I shouldn't be surprised that something with the word "SWAG" in it acts lazy and slow (2).

(2) I was debating whether to keep this part in or not, because I really do appreciate Will, one of our teammates, going out of his way to get us Wi-Fi. I just hate that stupid word so much, I had to take a cheap slam at it when the chance arose.

- One of my favorite parts of project so far was after the men got back from their overnight retreat, and after the women got back from theirs. What exactly happened is something I'd probably tell better in person, but know this - it was an honor to be served by the women when we got back, but it was an even greater honor to serve them when they got back from their retreat. I really enjoyed the interactions between us during those two days.