Immeasurably More

So, I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Madison, WI writing this post. My roommate is a Chinese-American girl named Audrey who is from University of California-Berkley. She will be planting a new Filipino InterVarsity Chapter next year. She has been a part-time staff worker for two years now, but this year will be full time. The way InterVarsity works is that you do one intern year and then are sent to another school on your own to either plant a ministry or build a chapter that already exists. Sometimes staff will do two "intern" years based on funding or their situation. Anyways, Audrey and I are getting along great and it is fun to be with someone from a different culture!

So far at ONS we've been talking about the vision of InterVarsity, which is to see, "Lives Transformed, Campuses & Faculty Renewed, and World Changers Developed". With that there are a lot of questions that go along with what that looks like and how you see those changes on a college campus. College students are the future of our generation and it is vital to invest in them as they will someday be our countries leaders!

Of course a big focus here at ONS is Ministry Partnership Development. Each missionary or "staff" has a budget based on their region and whether they are part-time or full-time. The budget includes your salary & benefits as well as costs of running the ministry. My budget for the upcoming year is approximately $41,000. Of course this sounds crazy, but the goal is to create partnerships where you have donors committed to giving a monthly gift and you are able to see your budget grow from there. I am currently 25% funded, which means that I have commitments as well as gifts that have already been received to get me there.

Doing Ministry Partnership Development can be a scary and intimidating thing and so there is a lot that goes along with it. InterVarsity tries to be faithful in providing us with resources to be successful and encouraging us along this journey. Today we heard some stories of crazy ways that funds were provided for staff workers and they also made us think about things differently. Some of the issues that came up were the following:

* Do you believe me to be abundant?

Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Not only through MPD but other times in life we can question God's abundance and his means of providing for us. He is always able to do more than we could ever think!

* If you want to create World Changers you have to let God change your world

* God is bigger than our fears

It is awkward to talk about money and it can be even scarier to ask people to join you in your ministry through financial giving. But when we put our hope and trust in God he gives us more than what we know how to ask. I think this is true in other situations too whether we fear the future or an upcoming event or anything in our lives. But God is bigger and better!

My small group here at ONS is awesome!! I have loved getting to know them even though we are only on day two. They also give us a pretty good amount of free time to go out and explore Madison. It is a really neat city. Today I got to see the Capitol building and then we went out with the other staff who will be doing Greek Ministry. Madison is a really neat city, so it is so much fun to explore. It is awesome to connect with Greek Staff from other areas like Connecticut and the New England area! Overall I am loving every minute so far!

Madison's Capitol

The two best Clemson interns!

XoXo,

Southern Saving Grace