First Large Group!

We had our first RUF large group of the year last night and I think it was a huge success!  I think we counted 60 students!

This week was a lot of firsts for RUF at UAB:
First week in a new, bigger room in Heritage Hall,
first time with a leadership/ministry team,
first time to have more than 30ish students attend (and we doubled!),
first time to have a totally student-led worship team,
first time with an intern (yay),
and the students got to finally find out that Joe and Melissa are having a girl!

After we met, we hung around and had ice cream and played kickball.  I think everyone had a fun time and it was good for me to finally see the group all together.

I'm so excited for the week ahead with small groups starting up and lots of hang out times with freshmen girls already planned!

In other news, I finally went grocery shopping....

P.S. I'm supposed to write a short bio for the website-- anybody have any good ideas?

I'm moving to Birmingham!

Today I got the green light to move to campus! I can't even begin to tell how mind-blowing and unreal it is to know that this is actually happening.

I am so thankful to the many people who have told me that they're praying for me and for my support to be raised.  It's been the most unforeseen source of encouragement this past week and summer, and such a reminder of God's goodness and faithfulness to me.

How do I tell you how thankful and blown away I am by the sheer number of people who are supporting me? And so generously! I'm undone by how my church family and friends have come around me and encouraged me in this, and by my peers (college students and recent college grads!) who have given SO much you wouldn't believe it.  I've struggled a lot this summer with coming to terms with asking people to give to something that I'm doing while also seeing so much of my sin and faults through this process.  I keep thinking, I'm not qualified, I don't deserve this and .... I don't! What a freeing realization. I don't deserve what's been given to me. I've asked people not to be a part of Laura's deal, but Christ's work on  UAB's campus. And thank goodness that He is the Qualified and the Worthy one!

Study Program

Part of the internship involves doing a study program-- usually two books a month and book reports on each. So for July, I'm finishing up Putting Amazing Back into Grace, by Michael Horton, and The Enduring Community, by Brian Habig and Les Newsom.

My favorite of the two was Enduring Community because its on the subject of the Church. The authors go into what the Bible says about Church and why we need it so much. I found it really helpful because questions of how to do church, and whether or not it's important is kind of a hot topic with college kids. There are lots of ideas out there about "reinventing church" and this book really answered a lot of those controversies, and more importantly, put Christ at the center of the discussion. It also helped that one of the authors is my pastor from Greenville and I think he's awesome and his church was one of the best parts of my last two years at Furman.

Support update: As of today, I've raised, $18,003 and need to raise $9,515 to move to Birmingham. Please consider being a part of this ministry by giving!

In the words of Tracy Tina of youtube fame,

"Peace and blessins, peace and blessins"

Laura

Nashville Wedding Weekend

I just returned from a weekend in Nashville to celebrate the marriage of my dear friends, Kelsey and Michael Bingham! The whole wedding was probably one of the most fun-filled, God-honoring, joyful weddings I've ever been a part of. The other bridesmaids and I had a couple conversations about what a difference it made that both of the families of the bride and groom loved Kelsey and Michael so well and that they both wanted the wedding to be a clear picture of Christ and the church. Our RUF campus minister gave the homily and left us all asking him to save it for a few (slash many) years down the road for our weddings.

All that aside, the real reason that the wedding was awesome was that we wrote a song and dance toast for K&M at the reception and we pretty much stole the show. Video to come.

An added bonus to the weekend came when we visited Kelsey's church on Sunday morning, Christ Community, where they were having an RUF sunday! Kevin Twit led worship, along with Emily Deloach, who has a beee-yoo-tiful voice. If you haven't heard of Indelible Grace Music, you should look into it!

We sang this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cnEDUMfPXs

This hymn has been very close to me this summer, as support raising has turned out to be a huge lesson in trust and patience. God seems to be teaching my that when we ask to grow, he's not going to do it the easy way, or at all the way we want it.

Also, when fellow RUF intern and bridesmaid for the weekend, Catherine, and I went to look for the RUF support table outside, we found three fellow interns from our intern class! We thought we wouldn't get to see you guys til October!

The weekend reminded me that I have so much to be thankful for! It felt like we were receiving one blessing after another! I got to spend one last weekend with my Furman besties and roommates before we all went our separate ways, was hosted by an incredible family that took us in as if we were their own kids (shout out to Kaka Ray!), and was given a beautiful reminder of how Christ loves us.