I first wanted to say, I hope everyone had a very blessed Christmas and a great New Years! I know I had a great break, traveling back to Missouri to see friends and family (traveling between Springfield, Lake of the Ozarks, and St Louis). I wish I was able to be in Haiti for part of the time, but God directs our foot steps, and we will make it to Haiti in June, if not earlier. My brother was in town this year for Christmas, and he hasn’t been in town for Christmas for a few years, so I was pretty excited about that. While I was in Missouri, I was also able to speak for a few minutes at my home church, that being Walk on the Water Faith Church, in Osage Beach, and that went pretty well. After the church service, i headed up to St Louis to catch my flight, and landed in Los Angeles that sunday night, ready to jump back into full time ministry.

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The winter quarter has officially started, and off with a bang at that! Classes officially started on monday here at UCLA, so I was out on Bruin Walk helping run the monday book table earlier this week. Bruin walk is the walkway that cuts through the center of campus that the students take to get to class and traverse from the dorms and back. Had a great day handing out fliers and promoting the welcome back party we had on tuesday. God has given me a passion for international students, and I was excited to meet an Iraqi student on Monday. Supprisingly, this student happened to be a Christian, and was telling me about the persecution Christians are facing over there and how they are being kicked out of the country. The international population at UCLA is so vast that statistically speaking, one and seven students that I see pass by me on Bruin walk will be international. Those students know a language and a culture that I will never know, as well as a vaste sphere of influence that many people could never reach. However, if these students are reached for the gospel, they will be positioned to bring the good news home!

Our first prayer meeting of the quarter was scheduled for next monday. However, we decided to have an unofficial prayer meeting on monday, and 25 people ended up coming out. That is pretty good for the first day of classes, at an unofficial prayer meeting, at a liberal college such as UCLA. The next days we hosted a welcome back party for all the returning and new students. We had a very succesful event, with both traditional and international students (one even being from Venizuella). We offered home made tacos and desert, tons of fun games, had the football game on, and had a wii system set up via projector. Our first weekly servie will be next tuesday.

Tommorow, we will be gathering with a bunch of students to play Ultimate Frisbee, and afterwards we will be heading back to the campus pastors house for more food and fellowship. This weekend we will be traveling to a place called Mullians which offers unlimited go carting, lazer tag, batting cages, a rock wall, etc. The reason we host events like these are not only to give the students a Godly enviornment to hang out in so they dont get caught up in partying instead, but it offers good opportunities to build quality relationships with non Christians and opens up the channel of communication with them to talk about Christ, whether at one of our weekly services, or during a one-on-one appointment with them.