time flies...

in just a few days we will be heading to turkey point for our planning weekend. it is so hard to believe that this time has already arrived but with the amount of prep i have to do this week, i am feeling it. may was much busier for me than in years past and we are already a week into june. so crazy.

to give you the quickest updates on what i did through may, i have been working on fundraising, leading a weekely bible study with students who are kicking around Hamilton for the summer, i took a one week intensive course on genesis and i have been helping friends fix-up their backyard. all of those things have been going well. the yard fix-up did a number on my old muscles but they are healing nicely and the yard is better for it.

now all my attention is focussed on this upcoming weekend. it has been exciting/strange planning for it because it seems like our time together will be so much more relaxed than i am used to. back in the days of being a student leader myself, the planning weekend meant 4 days of intense, non-stop discussion, and the only breaks we took were for meals (short ones) and sleeping. this year, we are getting together for 2 1/2 days and have planned to take a whole afternoon off together for a little beach excursion. the reason why this is possible, in my opinion, is because our leaders are coming into this weekend with such a strong sense of the vision of our ministry so we won't have to spend hours trying to figure it out. only one student has not studied the first half of the gospel of mark (a huge foundation for our vision) which starts us off at an amazing point that usually we don't reach until december. God has been so active in transforming students over the last 3 years that now we have to make some major changes to our visioning and planning process, which i don't mind doing at all but i really don't know what the new thing should be. this year's planning weekend will be experimental in some ways (hopefully without major explosions) but that seems to have been the theme for this ministry over the last couple of years and God has always showed up to pull us through...why would he stop now?

if you can remember, please pray for us as we are meeting this weekend. we will be planning for the first semester and need an openness to be creative and imaginative with events but not hold too tightly to them so that we forget about the people that they are for. also, pray that the team will continue to bond. it has been quite a while since we have all been together and we will have some catching up to do. lastly, please pray that we will be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and be open to the ways God wants to transform us during the year and not just focus on other's needs for growth.