October 2014
The adventures continue! :)
The adventures continue! :)
Here is an update on what what's been going on in our lives since our last blog.
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| Chatting after CRUX |
As far as
personally, Alaina and I traded in our beloved Camaro so that we could lower
our monthly payment. God was so good, He
blessed us with an amazing used car (2006 Jeep Commander). This will allow us to pick up college
students and make retreats that much more easy to prepare for. We’ve had a huge development as far as our
living situation goes. As many of you
know, we’ve been living with a wonderful woman from the church for a whole
year! God had put it on our hearts to
take in Alaina’s mother, Janice, to live with us.
This transition will allow us to have our own place. We’ll be moving in two weeks into a house that we'll rent with her mom. Please pray for us as we do ministry and take
care of her. Growing up in a
home where my parents took care of my grandmother, I know that it can be a lot
of work. We are very excited though! Please pray also for more support since now
we’ll be paying for our own utilities which the Lord has so graciously taken
care of this past year. Exciting news
all around!
Summer is
usually a time when college students go back home to live with their families,
pick up jobs and go on vacation. We
decided that for our CRUX College Ministry, that we would still meet every week
except that we would do an event every other Thursday. We thought we would lose a lot of our
students, and we did lose some. But to
our surprise we maintained the same amount of students we normally would
have. God brought new students to our
fellowship including some of our church’s recently graduated High School
Seniors! Our theme this summer was
“Yeah… it’s kinda like that.” Through
this series we talked about modern day parables, why story telling is important
when sharing the gospel and most importantly that their lives are a great story
that God wants to tell! You can check
out the first sermon I did on the subject on my blog http://whowithunveiledfaces.blogspot.com/2014/09/yeah-its-like-that-series-intersect.html.
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| Alaina at Identity |
If
you’re a fan of the show Chuck you’ll get a kick out of it.
Another
great thing that happened this summer was Alaina leading worship for our Identity
Service on Sunday nights! Our Sunday
night service is more worship-centric and Alaina led the congregation in 8
worship songs. She did a great job! Not only that but she continued to lead worship
for CRUX.
I got an
opportunity to preach about Communion.
This was big for me since this is the first time that I’ve preached in
the main services (we have two morning services). Not only that, it had the potential to be
seen by 300,000 viewers on the broadcast the church has that airs on FOX. Pretty cool!
Here is a link to my Communion talk (It’s only 8 minutes). http://vimeo.com/103747219
Also, in
regards to our broadcast, we have a commercial running for CRUX right now. Check it out!
http://vimeo.com/104669662
It was a great summer and as we are already
into the Fall semester we are excited with what God is doing. We were able to share a table with Fresno
State’s InterVarsity ministry so that we could introduce ourselves to students
as they arrived for the new school year.
We’ll also be having one of their leaders speaking at CRUX in a couple of
weeks. This weekend we will be taking
our student leaders on a retreat up into the Sequoia Mountains. It’ll be a time of discovering their
spiritual gifts and helping ignite a
passion for what God has for them. We
can’t wait!
I’ll leave
you with a part of a letter I received from one of our students a couple of
weeks ago.
“…I want you
to know that you have made a huge impact in my life and in this college
group. You’ve helped me see parts of God
that I’ve never seen before. I know of
his grace and his nature more because of what you’ve let Him do in your life! Please never get discouraged about your
impact on this group and this church… You’ve already made a big one…”
Without a lot of you, none of this would be happening.
Thank you again from the bottom of our hearts! Thank you for partnering with us as we reach
this community for Christ! We love you
so much!
Dan & Nick
at the Iron Men's Retreat
CRUX Pool Party
