Second Full Week of Project 5/6-5/11

This week has been a pretty normal week again.. God has really answered some prayers, every student now has a job and has started working as of Thursday! It is such a blessing... The community amongst everyone is continue to build and grow which is awesome to be a part of... All of the guys are great and really have a heart to grow.. I am pumped to see what all God does can do not only in the lives of the students and staff but also in the community of Juneau.. One of the big things this summer that I am really trying to do is not put a limit on what exactly God can do.. I feel like too many times, we put God in a box and put a limit on what He can do... I am really trying to just trust in the Lord and believe that He can do amazing things this summer... We are starting to build hype in the community for an outreach event called the Maze.. Here is a link to their website so you can read more about them... http://www.whatisthemaze.com/about... Here in about 30 minutes, we will be heading back downtown to have another outreach today... I will update you on how it goes....

Prayer Requests for this Week:
-That as the students begin their jobs, they will really be able to enter into the lives of their coworkers
-We as staff, as we continue to lead the project. Just that we will pursue Christ first and foremost, and that our discussions and decisions are guided by Him
-That people who are starting to become homesick or tired will truly look to Christ for their strength and not themselves

First Full Week of Project 5/29-6/4

So after we got back from Echo Ranch for orientation, we jumped into our first full week on project. On Monday we had evangelism training on how to strike up spiritual conversations by using the Knowing God Personally booklet that Campus Crusade puts out as well as using Soularium. For those who don't know what these are, the Knowing God Personally booklet breaks the Gospel down into four easily communicated points. Soularium, is a tool Cru puts out that uses a group of 50 pictures with four or five questions to easily get people to talk about their life and spiritual journey. The questions start off more general and then get more spiritually focused. After the training, we spread out to different places around town where people usually just hang out. God truly blessed us with a great day to go sharing, because the weather was beautiful and there were a lot of cruise ships in so there were a ton of people just hanging out. Afterwards, we came back together to share about the conversations that we were able to have with people. There were all types of awesome conversations that took place that Monday. Some people got to talk to believers who wanted to here about why we were here, some got to listen to people who are searching for something, and some even got to share the Gospel with a couple of people. It was awesome and from the stories you could truly hear that God had been working through us!!! So on Tuesday, students who had already found jobs began to work. Students' jobs are their main outlet for ministry, just really trying to get to know their coworkers and enter into their lives and realizing that no matter where we are whether it is at work, school, or somewhere else, we are called to live a missional life-style... Monday night we had our first Monday Night Live of the year, which is a time to come together as a project and plan for the week. We also do Evangelism training during this time along with breaking up into guys time where Jason, who is on staff with Cru, talks about what the Bible says about being a man of God. Every Tuesday night we have what is called Manhood Development which is a time where we go out as guys and use the outdoors as a teaching tool spiritually and just about life as well. This is one of my favorite nights on project. Wednesday night is the weekly Cru meeting on the campus of the University of Alaska-Southeast. Thursday night is action group night. The action group leaders cook dinner for each group and we have a time of fellowship, Bible Study, and accountability together. During the day on Friday, we spread out to different places in town and did service work for different groups around time. That night, we all went camping with our action groups. My action group got to be boated out to an island and spend the night camping on Coglan Island.. It was awesome! On Saturday, we had another outreach event downtown. We gave away free hot dogs at the public park downtown and had multiple soulariums set up and got to have some really good conversations for about 3 hours or so... Then on Sunday, we split up to different churches in the community and then have free time in the afternoon... At night we have a huge crowd of project people, locals, and people we have met at work or in the community that come out for a time of fellowship and we play ultimate frisbee at one of the high schools!!!

It has been a great first week... So glad the students are finally here and we are in the normal schedule. It makes things a little less stressful on me!!! Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers!!

Echo Ranch Pictures

Here are some pictures from Echo Ranch....

Echo Ranch

So for Orientation, all of the men's project headed out to Echo Cove Ranch which is a camp for youth here in Southeast Alaska. We headed out to Echo to serve them and do some manual labor for them to help them get ready for the upcoming summer. One of their biggest needs was for firewood to be cut and split, so we did that almost all day on Thursday. There is just something about serving together with other guys and doing manual labor that brings guys together and helps bond them. After we got done serving, we had a meeting that night in their chapel building. One of the staff, Matthew ( aka MJ), gave a talk on being real with each other as brothers in Christ and helping each other through life. Later that night, each action group got to have time together and share each others' stories. It was a great time to get to know all of the other guys in your action group that you live with. On Friday, we just spent a lot of the day continuing to get to know each other and playing games. Friday morning, Vincent, gave a talk on the Spirit-filled life and walking in the power of the Holy Spirit each and every day. He did a great job speaking on just how important it is to walk in the Holy Spirit and realize that as Christians, the Holy Spirit lives in us and works through us. Later that night, we had another meeting with worship as guys. There is something about worshiping the Lord with just a group of guys that is so powerful to me. It was truly incredible to be praising God with all the other guys around me. Also, I got to share my heart for the summer as the project director.  I am not one who normally likes to speak in front of people, but I feel like I did a fairly decent job of getting my thoughts across and communicated them fairly well. I really harped on just our project's vision, core values, and especially our mission. The project's vision is to put the Gospel in arm's reach of everyone in Southeast Alaska. The core values are never walking alone, white hot faith, effective evangelism, and authentic relationships. With that being said, I mainly focused on the mission of our project which is to equip and send out lifelong Christ-centered laborers. I think this is so important. As believers in Christ, we are called to help fulfill the Great Commission. I don't necessarily think that we are all called to go into full time ministry, but we should live out a missional lifestyle in all that we do whether we are a banker, mechanic, teacher, missionary, pastor, stay at home mom, or whatever career path that God takes each and everyone of us. We should all live out Christ's love in the way we interact with our coworkers and just everyone that we encounter in our everyday life and the conversations that we have with each of them.

Thanks again for keeping up with what is going on this summer in Juneau.

For some reason, it won't let me upload photos right now.... I'll post a couple from Echo Ranch when the website will let me...

Orientation Week

So... I know it has been a while since I have updated the blog.. Sorry about that one, but I am going to try and bring everyone up to date so far!! So the students arrived in Juneau on May 24th!!! It never seemed like the day would get here, but I am so happy that it did. We ran into some problems with some of the guys that were flying in to town because of all of the tornadic weather in the central United States, but everyone made it safely. On the 25th, we had a big long orientation meeting where we went through different rules that the University of Alaska Southeast had for us since we are staying in their housing. We also went through expectations and vision casting for the summer. Jason, our coordinator went through a lot of safety details about being in the Alaskan wilderness such as bear safety and things along those lines. We also divided all of the students up into different ministry teams and amongst the local churches in the community so we don't just flood one particular church. We have three different ministry teams this summer: prayer team, weekly meeting team, and the evangelism team. We divided the students up amongst 5 different churches in the community which include First Baptist, Douglas Island Bible, Calvary Fellowship, Chapel by the Lake, and Glacier Valley Baptist. I am attending Douglas Island Bible Church. I absolutely love the people of the church. They are so welcoming and inviting and very missional minded as a church. The pastor really preaches from the Word and does a great job of challenging the congregation as well. I am so excited that the students are finally here. The upcoming weekend, we are headed out to this place called Echo Ranch for orientation.

I am going to attach the video that we showed to the students to introduce the staff team. We had a little bit of fun. We did a dance video to the song Barbara Streisand. Hope you enjoy it....

Staff Introduction Video

History of the Juneau Men's Project

This will mark the 8th year that the Juneau Men's Project has taken place. The project was started by two men named Craig and Jason, who at the time were both on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. They both had a passion for men's ministry and wanted Campus Crusade to have a summer project that would focus on teaching college aged guys what the Bible says about being a man of God. At the time, it was focused on guys who were going to school in the Midwest region of the United States but has since grown to where this year there will be guys from almost every region of the United States.

The mission of the Juneau Men's Project is to equip and send out lifelong Christ-centered laborers for the Kingdom. The vision of the project is to put the gospel within arm's reach of everyone in Southeast Alaska. The project's core values are authentic relationships, effective evangelism, white hot faith, and never walking alone.

The heart of the project is to teach colleged aged guys what the Bible says about masculinity, train the students in how to share their faith, and challenge them to take their faith seriously and live for Christ in every thing that they do.

This summer, there are 24 guys who will arrive in Juneau tomorrow to participate in the summer project. The summer will test, challenge, and grow each and every guy in many different ways. There are six returning staff who have been here for the past few days prepping for the summer. We are so excited, and can't wait for the students to get here tomorrow!

This week, we have been getting things from storage, preparing Bible study for the summer, planning the outreach events that we will be doing this summer, and preparing to invest in the lives of each and every student that will arrive on project tomorrow!

I leave you with this year's promotional video for project.....

Roadtrip to Juneau

So the journey began on Thursday, May 12th from Fayetteville, Arkansas. I had a final that morning from 8-10 a.m. and then I pulled out of town headed to pick up Sam's car in Columbia, MO. The funny thing was, I had never met Sam before. We had talked over the phone multiple times throughout the semester but never actually met until the day I showed up to pick up his car for the road trip. After meeting Sam and picking up his car, I headed west to Kansas City to pick up another staff guy, Justin, at the airport. Justin flew from Charlotte, NC to KC so he could roadtrip up with us this summer. We then proceeded to drive to Seward, NE to arrive at the place we would be staying that night. We were meeting two of the women's staff for the summer, Ann and Emily, and staying there at Ann's grandparents house. We then preceeded to Laramie, WY where we met another staff guy, MJ, and stayed at his friend's house there in town. Little did we know, one of the other housemates had a super energetic dog named Turbo. The dog wanted nothing more than for us to play fetch with it all night long. We would put its toy on a shelf on the wall and watch with anticipation as she would climb onto the couch and jump onto the rocking chair and then reach out to grab her toy. It was definitely a sight to see. The next day, we drove to Boise, ID and once again stayed at a friend of MJ's. I got to see the smurf turf, which is the football field of Boise State. The next day, we drove through the Cascade mountains in Washington which were absolutely beautiful on our way to pick up Sam, whose car I picked up, from the airport. He had graduated on Saturday and flew up to meet us on Sunday. We preceeded on that night to go through Vancouver, British Columbia and stayed at a campsite outside of Cache Creek, British Columbia. Upon arriving, we came to the realization that we only had 1 two person tent amongst six people and it was raining outside. So the ladies used the tent, while two guys slept in the car and MJ and myself created a make shift shelter using two tarps and a picnic table. It worked and kept us try all night. The next day we drove almost all day and late into the night and early morning. Finally, we found a campsite off the side of the highway in northern British Columbia. We got up the next morning and continued on and reached the Alaska Highway, where we then preceeded to drive until we crossed the border back into Skagway, AK. We jumped on the ferry today, May 18th, from Skagway to Juneau because there is no road that actually comes into Juneau. We arrived in town today around 3:30 p.m. and have been getting settled in the rest of the day. Staff Orientation starts tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. with breakfast together, followed by a staff meeting at 10.

I am so excited for the summer to finally be here. It seems like I can't believe that it is finally here but it also seems as if it has gotten here so quickly as well. It is going to be a great summer and God is going to do some amazing things through us as staff this summer as we reach out to the city of Juneau and as we invest into the lives of the 24 students coming on project this summer.

Some prayer requests for the upcoming week:
1) Unity and cohesiveness as a staff team
2) Safe travel for students as they start their trips to Alaska
3)That we as a staff, will get everything done and prepared for when the students arrive on May 24th
4) That God will begin to work in our hearts as we prepare as a staff to invest into the students on project, in the students hearts who are coming on project his summer, and in the hearts of the people of Juneau

Until next time.....