Fall quarter is nearing the end, and it has been such an incredible quarter. It is fun to sit and reflect on all that God has done this quarter. It brings me to my knees in praise of God's love, power, and glory. He is so good! I feel like this has been a quarter of love. God seems to be teaching all of us how to receive his love and realize who we are as his beloved children. Only in receiving his love can we love him and others back, which is the aim of our lives. 1 John 4:10 says, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." If we do not receive his love first, we cannot love him or others as we are called to do. God has been moving a lot of these truths into our hearts, and we have seen students just falling more in love with Him as they experience Him. Our single greatest desire and prayer for our students is that they would truly learn how to receive from God and let Him love them. Right along with that prayer is that they would love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength and love their neighbors as themselves! There are a lot of things pulling at us in our world, and there are a lot of things that compete for our allegiance and love. God has truly been revealing the treasure that He alone is--far above all other things.

Our weekly Monday night Cross Training worship gatherings at Steve and Lori's house (which we are so thankful for their generosity in letting us use their beautiful house as we surely could not fit in our house) has been such a rich time of community, worship, learning, pouring into one another, and soaking in God's love and presence. His Spirit is so alive among us as we come together to refocus and worship Him. He has definitely been working powerfully in everyone's hearts to reveal himself to us, his love for us, his heart for lost people on our campus and beyond, our purpose here at Stanford, and the people he has destined us to become--conformed to the likeness of our King. I really cannot express to you how much this time has felt like a glimpse of what the early church must have felt like. It is neat to see that while he has given us more vision and conviction than ever to be more missional on our campus, he has also been increasing our understanding of how that will most effectively happen--by falling more in love with Him and relying on HIS powerful Spirit that is at work within us, rather than subconsciously thinking that we are self sufficient to carry out his commission on our own. He keeps giving me a picture of a seed that is planted to produce a harvest. It must first die so that the outer shell is cracked open. Then what is inside can grow and come forth. As Jesus said, " I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds," (John 12:24). I picture the outer shell as my self and my pride that needs to be cracked open and crucified daily so that the Spirit inside of me can minister to others through me. So "it is no I who live, but Christ who lives in me," (Galatians 2:20).

We just had our last Cardinal Life of the quarter last night and it was just incredible. We had over 100 kids there and we were privileged to have Stanford and Cardinal Life alumni Ryan and Sarah Hall! If you follow running at all, Ryan is the fastest American born marathon runner ever, and recently set the still current American record at the Olympic trials for Beijing. Much more importantly, they are true disciples of Jesus who love Him so much and are using this platform to unashamedly proclaim their greatest love and treasure far above any running achievements. They spoke so much Godly wisdom to our group last night about what truly matters and what truly defines us, which made us so happy.

We continue to see people coming to know Jesus for the first time and in a much deeper, powerful and transformative way. We ask you to pray for the students we meet one on one with and in small groups (about 100 guys and girls total! Praise God!)--that they would continue to grow in the knowledge of who God is and that they would "experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then they will be complete, having the fullness of life and power that comes from God," (Ephesians 3:19). Please pray for the campus as a whole and the difficult culture of relativism where "no one can claim to have truth". This makes proclaiming the gospel difficult and it seems like so few have ears to hear. But God is amazing and he continues to powerfully reveal Himself to people all the time. He is bigger than our culture! My faith has strengthened in the truth of Romans 1:16 that says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the POWER of God for the salvation of everyone who believes". The gospel is inherently powerful, and all we can do is faithfully proclaim his love while SHOWING them the easy yoke, the beauty, the love, and the full life of following Him.

One last exciting prayer request is that we are putting on a big human trafficking conference May 15th and 16th. Many of our students are very passionate about being apart of the abolitionist movement that is growing around the issue of ending modern day slavery. There are over 27 million slaves in our world, most of which are women and children, and it is happening in our own American cities! We already have some incredible speakers, groups, and musicians coming, so we are praying that God will use this conference to raise awareness, proclaim Jesus as the true source of freedom, and mobilize the body to take action to help fight human trafficking. We will share more exciting details soon!