We are so excited and stoked to announce that our good friend Emilee Shim will be joining Kingdom First staff to help with student ministry. She brings a wealth of gifts to the table that greatly complement Trent and I, and we are so blessed to have her. Emilee graduated the year between Trent and I (2005) and played soccer at Stanford. She worked with Young Life, an awesome high school ministry, in this area for the last two years, then went to Kenya last year to work in an orphanage. She led backpacking trips all summer in Colorado for Young Life, and is now joining us for an awesome year!

She is also joining at the perfect time as there is a great need for her! Last year I met with over 25 girls one on one every week, and led three small groups, so I could not take on any more! Tonight at our first Cardinal Life of the year, we had over 100 students there, and over 20 NEW girls said they either wanted to meet one on one with a Cardinal Life advisor, be in a small group, or learn more about starting a personal relationship with God! Praise God, but I definitely could not have accommodated 45 girls to meet with! So needless to say I am very happy to have my best friend who I so love and admire join us in our mission to love and come alongside Stanford students with the love and good news of Jesus.

So the school year has officially started and it has been an awesome start! We had a kickoff bbq at the park behind our house the day before classes started, and we had a big group of students show up for good food, fellowship, and fun games (washoes and polish golf...if you haven't played them you are missin' out:) Then the following night we had our first official Cross Training of the year. Cross Training is our weekly meeting where we share a meal, study the Word, get into each other's lives, worship God, pray, and then usually have goofy dance parties at the end. It is the highlight of our week and God always moves powerfully in our midst. Last year we had cross training at our house, which we quickly began to grow out of! So this year we are meeting at Steve and Lori's house (the couple we are blessed to work with who started Kingdom First and have been doing ministry at Stanford for 8 years now) which is much more spacious. Last night we had about 60 or more students, which would have been physically impossible to fit in our house.

We are very thankful for and excited about the movement of God on this campus. It is such a joy to see students' hearts being captivated by His love and wanting to live as He did and bear much fruit for His Kingdom. And of course, seeing people come to know Jesus personally for the first time and seeing their lives be forever changed is worth it all!