The school year is coming to a close. It has been an incredible spring quarter and year. One of my favorite things about spring quarter was having the opportunity to lead a freshman girl on the tennis team to Jesus and watch her embrace Him wholeheartedly. I am convinced of the Lord's power when he reveals Himself to students who have not grown up with a Christian background whatsoever, and then they just get it so quickly. Within a few weeks, she had me in tears (of joy and praise) because of the wisdom that was coming out of her mouth, how hungry she was to read Scripture, and the things the Lord was convicting her of and showing to her. For example, I led her to Christ on a Friday, and by Monday she had already read John, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 1 John, and half of the book I gave her. And that was even during a busy time for her! Within a week she was saying things to me like, "I want to surrender everything in my life to Him because He is so beautiful and good." Or "I have so much joy and purpose for the first time in my life and I am so thankful to have found the greatest truth and reality." Or "I see how wretched my heart is and how much I long to be more like Jesus." Seeing even one student come to know Jesus keeps the fuel in my heart burning for a long time, and we were blessed to see quite a few students come to know Christ for the first time this year!

The Freedom Summit was absolutely INCREDIBLE last weekend!! It far surpassed my expectations in quality and quantity of people that came! We had about 500 people register in the last few days leading up to the conference, so we had about 1,000 people total. While numbers are not the ultimate gauge of success for anything, we were thrilled that 1,000 people in the Bay Area cared enough about human trafficking to come to the Freedom Summit. We were also thrilled that 1,000 people were educated and given many opportunities at the conference to get involved in fighting this horrible injustice (we had about 25 local and international organizations come to the conference. Each organization was given a table in the "global village" where conference attendees were able to explore, ask questions, and see how they could get involved.) We can't wait to see all that God is going to do as a result of this conference! We trust that many seeds were planted at the Freedom Summit, and that He will cause them to grow as He desires. Beginning on June 1st, videos of all the main and breakout sessions will be posted on our website: www.freedom-summit.org. Make sure to watch at least the three main sessions if you were not able to attend. We also posted the handbook on our website, and this is a great compilation of information on the organizations that were present--their needs, vision, niche in fighting human trafficking, prayer requests, and how YOU can get involved. We were so blessed by this event and praise GOD for all that He is doing here among us!

2nd Mile - Green Oaks Academy from Emilee Shim on Vimeo.

Check out our most recent 2nd mile slideshow. We rennovated an elementary school in East Palo Alto last weekend, and it was a blast! We were excited to bless the students and staff at this school, and it was such a joy to serve. We had a lot of students come out too, which was a lot of fun!

We finally arrived home from Honduras late last night. The trip was incredible to say the least for everyone involved! We felt God move in powerful ways in and through us, the work was very rewarding, the group got along incredibly and bonded a lot, no one got sick (at least no signs of sickness yet...some fevers take a week to kick in so hopefully no one got anything:), everyone grew in new ways, and everyone was used in the lives of the local people who we were privileged to hang out with for a week. Trent and I just love mission trips for so many reasons, and this proved to be worth all of the hard work that went into planning it!

Here is a short snippet from an email that Trent sent the parents while we were there. It gives a brief picture of our work and rhythm there:

funny group pic

speeding their boat through the mangroves

launching each other off the dock:)

singing with the kids

house demo

cute kids!

more craziness off the dock

playing with kids is hard work:)

awesome beach in one of the towns where we worked

On the way to work!

Some of our students working

Our amazing artist Kat painting one of many murals at the school in town

Repainting a school

Playing with the precious kids!

Check out the incredible promotional video for the Freedom Summit that one of our students made!! You can read more about the Freedom Summit in the post right below this. Go to our website at www.freedom-summit.org to learn more and register now!


Freedom Summit from Freedom Summit on Vimeo.

We are more than excited about the upcoming Freedom Summit, a conference on slavery and human trafficking! We have an incredible team of our students and Abundant Life members working hard to put this together. It has been so fun to see our students take ownership and come alive in planning this conference. We have incredible speakers coming, including pastor Francis Chan from Cornerstone church near LA, David Batstone with Not for Sale, and Bethany Hoang from International Justice Mission. Not for Sale and IJM are two of the biggest and best organizations in the country fighting human trafficking! In putting this conference together, we have learned so much and met so many incredible people who are working full time to fight this massive injustice in this world.

One example of someone we have met who is working hard to fight this injustice and will join us at the conference is Nathan George (and his small team of employees) who started a for profit business called Trade as One a few years ago. Nathan worked in the UK in business for 20 years before he felt led to start this business in the United States. He started by spending a lot of time travelling around the world to places where there is a lot of poverty, AIDS, and/or human trafficking. He found large and small businesses who were employing people living with AIDS, in dire poverty, or coming out of forced prostitution or labor. He said the one main thing that all of these people wanted was help in marketing and selling their products. So he set up Trade as One to buy products from these businesses and sell them in the States. Last year, they sold $700,000 worth of products and it was only their second year in operation! They are not only running an eithical business in which ALL of the products they sell are 100% slave free, but the very existence of their business is responsible for sustaining and creating jobs for many thousands of people living with AIDS, in dire poverty, or coming out of human trafficking. Now that to me is an example of creative Kingdom business that delights God's heart!!