Week One

June 4, 2011

California is cold BUT amazing. I thought this was going to be a beach and tan kind of trip, but it’s been rainy, cold, and windy almost every day we’ve been here. I’ve met some really cool people from all over the country, including some people I’d never met from NC State. I have four roommates (Steven, Jonathan, Noah, and Bryce who are cool), one of which is my discipler Steven. He’s from Oklahoma, and he’s awesome. We’ve been doing some ministry training- going over the Knowing God Personally and Satisfied booklets to learn how to talk to people about Jesus. Since this isn’t a religious area (only 6% attend a church or synagogue), we’re advised not to use words like sin, faith, grace, baptized, etc initially because these may scare people away or they have no idea what we’re talking about. We’re learning how to replace the words life for example faith with trust so they can understand better what we’re talking about. We’ve been having some really cool socials too. We went to a winery yesterday and cooked out and had a praise and worship night. I could fill the Spirit moving there as we prayed! Steven Andrews, Christin, Elizabeth and I shuttled together from the San Jose airport to Santa Cruz early Monday morning (1am California Time!), and we had a great opportunity to share the gospel with our driver. His name is Cole, and he flat out told us that he didn’t understand the gospel. (What a great time to tell him!) So we explained the gospel to him and prayed for him, and he wants to hang out with us again soon! Hopefully if all goes well we can meet up with him tomorrow to get to know him and build a relationship with him. Please pray he’ll come to accept Christ this summer! I love y’all and I hope you’re having a great summer! I’ll try to keep y’all updated on how everything goes weekly. The internet here is horrible! 

P.S. I started my job today! I made funnel cakes and ran the register! I work at Whiting’s Foods so over the summer I’ll have done Pizza Hut, Dippin Dots, Funnel Cakes, Deep Fried Twinkies, Fish ‘n Chips, and a bunch more of food places.