Over the weekend I met up with a Jewish student that I had met at book table a week and a half earlier or so for lunch. I remember handing him a flier for our Chinese New Year celebration during book table. This student had then walked back and returned to flier to me after taking a glance because it had said something like “Sponsored by Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship” in the corner. He said that he was Jewish, and did not want me to waste a flier on him. I told him that I too was Jewish, a Messianic Jew at that, and so was my former roommate who was handing out fliers next to me. I then said that we should get together sometime and talk, so he gave me his information and went on his way. I prayed that God would open his heart and grant me favor during our meeting. This student was a Reformed Jew, and as opposed to Orthodox Judaism, Reformed Jews are not against messianic Jews (Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah). As for their religious activities, they celebrate the main holidays and try to live a moral life, but do not hold strictly to the Law.

As I was meeting with this student, I was shocked at how little he really knew about Jesus. One of the first questions that he had asked me was how old our religion was. At first I thought he was referring to how long Chi Alpha had been at UCLA. He thought the concept of Jews believing in Jesus was a new thing. I explained to him that Jesus was Jewish and all the disciples and writers of the new covenant were Jewish as well, and at the time did not consider themselves Christians, but was a term outsiders derived and started calling them. He had no clue that the last super was actually a Passover meal, and never heard the concept of Jesus dying and them coming back to life. He asked me what it meant when they say he carried the cross. It shocked me how someone living in the United States could really not know the message and truth of Jesus, and yet we as Christians take this for such granted. He told me that he had never heard of any of this stuff that I was telling him, and neither had his parents, who are from the Los Angeles Area. I highly encouraged him to come to our service tonight, and explained to him what the service would look like. He asked if he could sit in the back and just observe, and I recommended he do so. I am excited for the service because we have a guest speaker in town speaking tonight, who flew all the way in from Sacramento to be here, and we will have an opportunity to connect deeper with the students afterward because we are supplying free food.

In anticipation of this speaker, we gave out free Panera Bagels, pastries, etc, along with starbucks coffee and hot coco on the UCLA campus yesterday. We were able to get a lot of contact cards filled and make a push for attendance tonight. The speaker, Curt Harlow is in charge of all West Coast Chi Alpha, and is one of the best story tellers I have met and am extremely excited for our service tonight. He led a leadership training last night with the staff, interns, and student leaders, and did an incredible job. Before tonight’s service, he is also going to lead a session for the interns. I still reference material from the last intern track he did, and am excited for a successful day in ministry.

This last weekend we hosted a Chinese New Year celebration. Chinese New Year is the most anticipated holiday in many Asian cultures. Because the United States does not use the lunar calendar, Chinese New Year is typically overlooked in western cultures, leaving certain internationals feeling lonely this time of year, knowing that their families are back home celebrating without them. A comparable example would be an American studying abroad in China over Christmas. Because the International Student Friendship recognizes this problem, we have been hosting an annual Chinese New Year celebration for these students, with an open invitation to anyone else who wishes to participate. This year’s celebration was our most successful event in terms of attendance since our group has been at UCLA. We had over 125 students in attendance, with estimates of upwards of 140 people in all.

Chinese students helped plan and carry out the event to help make it as authentic as possible for a celebration of this nature within the United States. Internationals helped cook authentic Chinese food, as well as recommended games to be played during the event. We had a ping pong tournament due to the popularity of table tennis in Asian countries, Chinese and English Karaoke, Mahjong, as well as a few other activities including a competition of picking up marbles in water with chop sticks.

During the even I was able to connect well with an atheist Malaysian student, as well as connect deeper with a Christian from Belgium (though originally from Africa). Shockingly, this individual was under the impression that the majority of so called conservative Christians were racist. That of course is a ridiculous claim, but as far as he is concerned, it is truth. He said that I was the 2% that was not racist. This student is a Public Policies major and will only be in the United States until the end of this school year, and though Christian, has a skewed mindset on some serious issues. I have been gaining credibility and favor with this individual, and plan on giving him good the Christian discipleship that he’s never had, sending him home to influence the world for God and not vice versa.

The weekend following the Winter Retreat, I yet again found myself flying, but this time up to . I had an expense free trip to not only share a little bit of what God has been doing out in Los Angeles at a local church, but also to help at the March for Life in Washington DC. This was trip was no vacation however, with much work to be done during my stay. This was my second time sharing at The Father’s Heart International Ministry, as well as my third time to participate in the March for Life. The March for Life is this nation’s largest prolife rally, with attendance over 400,000, consisting of lobbyers marching from the national mall (4^th street in front of the Washington Monument) to the Supreme Court. This year march yet again exceeded the previous year’s attendance resulting in the largest turnout yet. I helped promote www.SaveTheStorks.com, the prolife work that I helped with in New York over the summer.

I spent the past three summers traveling across the country to music festivals helping embolden this generation with shirts that tackled issues social such as abortion and Darwinism (www.liveoffensively.com). This prolife movement known as Save the Storks is a ministry birthed out of Life Offensively for God Ministries who I have been traveling with. We distributed approximately 5,000 save the stork fliers, as well as sold apparel and beanies. The purpose of this being to raise funds and awareness to purchase a stork bus, a mobile pregnancy center that parks in front of abortion clinics offering free ultra sounds and pregnancy tests. Three out of five women who get an ultrasound decide to keep their child. This ministry is looking to raise $150,000 in the next three months, and If I was not working full time with Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship, I would be devoting more concentrated efforts towards this ministry.

Over martin Luther King Weekend, our Chi Alpha Chapter took a group of 36 people to Sacramento for our annual winter conference. College students involved with Chi Alpha from across the west coast came out, including schools such as the University of Los Vegas, UCLA, USC, Sacramento State, University of Hawaii, Berkley, and Stanford. Over 350 came in to worship God and deepen their relationship with Him. UCLA’s worship band led the afternoon and evening worship services, and I helped run the sound for most of the event. The main speaker hit home, speaking on the unseen years of Jesus and how they prepared him for his mighty accomplishments in ministry. Yet those seemingly short three years shaped the course of history. I feel that I am currently living in these so called hidden years, behind the scenes and just being obedient to God’s calling on my life at this place and time. Coming from the entrepreneurial background that I did, I tend to be a an outgoing visionary, big thinker, and one who likes to take the spot light, but for now, I will stand my ground and go for what God has called me to accomplish and learn during this season.

The UCLA students were really moved by the services and the group as a whole deepened their relationships not only with God, but with each other as we all hung out as a whole throughout the weekend. Conferences like this are always a great place for people to deepen their relationships with those they are experiencing it with. I really feel that some of the students who historically were not that involved with Chi Alpha will now start stepping up in leadership because of the closeness they felt during the conference. One student who I had organically met at book table the previous quarter who ended up coming to the conference had a powerful testimony at our following service. He expressed his deep concern of missing his radical life of sin before becoming a Christian. He thought that being a Christian equated to a lame and uneventful life. He then said that after experiencing this retreat that he realized that “there is no fun like Christian fun. Actually, there is no fun like Chi Alpha fun.” It’s great to see the impact of the work I am doing out here and how it’s greatly affecting the lives of the students around me.

During the retreat, I remember speaking with a student from Stanford who said that Stanford was his fourth choice, but felt that it was a better fit for him and where God wanted him even if it was a step down in prestige. I asked him if he had gotten into his other three choices and what where they. His response was that he did indeed get accepted into the other three, that being Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. This student was only a freshman, but was at this conference going for God. This is a testimony to the caliber of people Chi Alpha is reaching now only at UCLA, but across this nation and world.

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.

-

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.

As many of you know, I am supposed to be in Haiti right now. I was scheduled to leave for Miami on the morning of Wednesday, December 8th and land in Haiti the morning of Thursday, December 9th. If you have been following the news in Haiti, you know that the country is experiencing “civil unrest” due to the election results on Tuesday. This has resulted in rioting in the streets, blockades in the road ways, and mass mobs of angry Haitians catching fire to buildings, etc. Our group had taken many trips to Haiti over the last 10 years in the midst of danger and uncertainty and this is the first time a trip has ever been canceled.

The campus pastor got word from the orphanage the morning our flight was scheduled to leave. Our driver from the orphanage said he did not think he could make it to Port-au-Prince to pick us up. In the midst of the rioting, cholera outbreak, etc, the last thing our group wanted was to be Americans stuck in the heart of the nation’s conflict.
We know we made the right decision. Within hours of having to cancel the trip, it was announced that all flights going into Haiti was suspended due to the conflict. If our team tried to push through regardless of what our driver said, our team of 15 would be stranded in Miami awaiting flights back to Los Angeles.

It was reported that airport workers were unable to make it to the airport, shutting down all of Haiti’s incoming and outgoing flights. Though the mobs are starting to cool down, it is uncertain how long this “civil unrest” due to suspected election fraud will last. It was announced today that cargo flights are able to landing in Haiti, but all American Airline flights are all still canceled until Monday at least.

It was a very heartbreaking decision to have to cancel this trip. I have never left the country before, and was really excited for the opportunity to help the children at this orphanage. Practically, we were bringing much needed financial aid to this orphanage, not to mention the spiritual encouragement our presence would have offered. We had tons of gifts packed for the children of the orphanage for Christmas and now these kids are not going to get to have a real Christmas this year. This is the most anticipated event of the year for these kids, and I am sure that the disappointment the team and I feel about not being able to come is multiplied many times over for these kids. Please pray for the kids and staff at this orphanage in Fond Doux.

The good news is that we should be taking a trip in June, and some of our group may potentially take a trip over UCLA’s spring break to get this orphanage its much needed supplies. Contributions towards this trip will be used towards the next trip. I wanted to thank all of you who were praying for the trip. If we flew in a few days earlier, we could have easily been caught in the middle of the chaos and who knows how long it will take for things to cool down completely.

During the Pasadena trip, I had an opportunity to meet a brilliant Chinese student who had barely been in the United States even a month. A Chinese student who had accepted Christ a few weeks ago had invited him out to our event. This new student was a practicing doctor back in China and was set up as a visiting scholar getting paid to work with one of the hospitals at UCLA. A few funny things he said about Los Angeles was that he was surprised at how low the buildings were, how good the traffic was, and how much open space there was here. The irony behind that statement is that L.A. is one of the most congested, polluted, and crowded cities in the United States. While we were hanging out, I told this student about how we play Ultimate Frisbee and that he should come out and join us some time. Later that week we ended up playing and I invited him out and he showed up and played.

The following week was our Thanksgiving celebration for internationals and he was in attendance there as well. After speaking with him at Thanksgiving, I encouraged him to come to our weekly service that next week and explained that it was Christian service with a live band and a teaching from the Bible. I told him that it would be the last service of the quarter and it would be a good cultural experience for him and a great opportunity to see the friends he had made at the other activities he attended. He said he would show up, but I had heard that from many students and was not sure if I would actually see him that Tuesday.

Sure enough, Tuesday came and there he was with the Chinese student who originally invited him to one of our events. I was able to share my testimony with the attendees for a few minutes and then my roommate was given an opportunity to preach that night. After my roommate preached, there was an altercall the campus pastor was able to go to the back and speak with this student. This brilliant Chinese student had made the decision to become of follower of Jesus Christ on Tuesday and I am excited to see how God radically transforms his life and the lives of his friends and family back in China. God’s been doing some heavy stuff on the UCLA campus and it’s only going to get stronger and stronger.

Thanksgiving is the oldest and one of the most anticipated and celebrated holidays this country has to offer. It provides an opportunity to get away and give thanks for all the things God has provided and is a holiday typically spent with close loved ones and family. International students are known to spend their Thanksgivings by themselves either in their dorm room or site seeing because they have no one to celebrate it with. Most Americans spend this time with their own family, leaving internationals shut out from this traditional American holiday.

Most of the staff and interns who work with UCLA Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship are from the Midwest. Instead of flying home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have instead been hosting an annual celebration through the International Student Friendship for these internationals who have no place to go. This year we fed between 80 and 100 people with tons of free turkey, homemade mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, as well as all the other traditional foods and treats. The whole event lasted over six hours which included a time to publically give thanks, a turkey drawing competitions, board games and fellowship, as well as a rap that me and my former roommate were asked to write and perform about the history of Thanksgiving. It was surprisingly historic and funny all in one. I posted the video below, feel free to pass it on to your friends and family.

The International Student Friendship hosted a trip to Old Town Pasadena on Nov 20th. While we were there, we toured the historic district of Pasadena, taking lots of pictures and the sort along with shopping, etc. After we got done touring the downtown, we finished the night up with dinner at a historic pizza place followed by an evening of Ice skating fun. Many of the internationals were inexperienced ice skaters and we were able to help them along. There was a good share of international students who came out to the event, and they all had
an amazing time.

I was excited that a Thai friend of mine I had invited was able to come. I went to Six Flags with UCLA’s international center a month prior and had met him on the trip and was really excited that he was coming to our events. He came to our fall party too, and every time he has come to an event, he would invite his friends too. They kept expressing to us during the Pasadena trip how surprisingly how nice we were and were very appreciative of our group.

It’s a great feeling to be able to make a difference in these international students lives. They will only be in the United States for a short season before returning to their home countries, and the impact we have on these students will follow them the rest of their lives. During this trip, I also had the opportunity connect well a Chinese during that had been in the US barely a month. I mentioned this student in greater detail above.

Though I currently live a life of full time missions, I will be engaging in my first so called “mission trip” abroad. This is my first time to ever leave the country, and this trip will take me to the poorest country of the western hemisphere. Our ministry has been supporting an orphanage in Fond Doux, Haiti for the last 12 years. This trip will be our groups 6th time to this orphanage in the last 15 months. Many staff members, interns, and students have already taken this long trek to the orphanage over years. I believe it is finally God’s timing for me to take this trip as well.

Our group has been bringing aid to an orphanage located 60 miles from the 7.0 earthquake last year, and just 12 miles from the 5.9 aftershock! Sadly, our group is basically the only ongoing support this orphanage receives. We have brought food, toys, clothing, and financial support to help this orphanage in its times of deepest need. Last year our group won this orphanage $5,000 from US Bank which was critical in their time of struggle.

They still desperately need our help, and while we are there we will be engaging in food distribution, discipleship children’s ministry, Intercession, a soccer outreach, a Christmas celebration, etc. The tentative schedule for the trip is from December 8^th to 22^nd. Please be praying for safety, wisdom, and God’s divine hand on everything we do. If you would like to contribute to the trip, you can mail checks to:

Bryan Citrin,
8929 Guthrie Ave Apt D,
Los Angeles CA 90034