Hello from the LAST DAY on PCB!!

This is the girls reporting from suite 606 where today we had our day off before beginning our grueling drive home to Ithaca (is cold), NY. This past week has been such a blessing from God that He has allowed us to partake in His ministry and Kingdom. It feels reminiscent of what the disciples must have felt like ushering in the Good News to a broken world.

OH – an addition to our last post – so, at the beginning of every morning and evening session, our emcee Shelby introduces this Cru tradition called the ‘Love Seat of Love.’ Essentially, he’ll ask a random trivia question and people will run up and try to get the answer. If they get it right, they get to invite another person up to the LSoL. This whole week, Adam’s been wanting to get it because one of the prizes is also a free Big Break T-shirt. And lo and behold – on Tuesday night, HE WON! By guessing how many people in the world share the same birthday as him (9 million). It was a victory for Cornell overall, and he called our very own Jeanne Lee up to share the love with him We DO have video, so stay tuned for that.

Wednesday was another good day – morning session, one of our speakers reminded us that we’re not self-justified yet it’s our first reaction to anything. Quick lunch of sandwiches again, then we headed off to Sharky’s, a popular restaurant near some of more luxury suites. Here, we were able to set up Soularium again and engage with people in conversation. It’s been a little discouraging because most of Wednesday, I talked to people whom were confident they were Christians and in their salvation, yet did not see Christ as Lord…

On the bright side though, a sister from West Virginia U and myself were able to share the Gospel with two Catholics whom recommitted their lives to Christ!! We spotted them with John Piper’s book Passion of the Christ, yet when we were chatting, they were unsure if they were saved and what was needed for salvation. We went through the Knowing God Personally booklet and prayed for the Holy Spirit to (re)enter their lives and for God to be sovereign.

At night, the girls cooked for the guys again – baked barbeque chicken, homemade mashed potatoes, steamed veggies and potato fries. We had a campus time after (no evening session) where we were able to share honestly about our high and low points and our emotional and spiritual barometers – then prayer for one another.

After campus time, we went to everyone’s famous all American drive-in – SONIC!!! The guys had already been numerous times, but for the girls, it was a glorious experience. We all got milkshakes and food, and nearly overwhelmed our poor waiter. Jeanne and I split a strawberry malt (per recommendation of Nic) and it was delicious. Jeanne would like to clarify to she finished most of it. Sarah had a cool run-in that night also – she was wearing her Cornell Sweatshirt, and was picked out by someone who had been in her physics class! Turns out a group from Cornell had been at PCB also – a group of sophomores from the soccer team. It was cool talking to them, but was a sober reminder that we would eventually return to school and continue the battle there.

The next morning (Thursday) was our last full day on the beach L One of our sharers shared about the name of God and how it’s tied to the attributes of God – it’s all about perspective, and even though we don’t ‘see’ we must believe. Quick lunch again of sandwiches, then off to La Vela/Spinnakers again. We also picked up a few stray students from Purdue who needed a ride. We found street parking, then off we went to the beach to EV for the last time. Jeanne, JW and I set up Soularium again near the Lil’ Wayne MTV Concert where we were able to talk to a number of people. It was a little harder at first to talk to people and we had to constantly battle feeling discouraged from this — in the end, the Lord did bless us with several good conservations and planting seeds.

We took Adam out to a local seafood restaurant to celebrate his birthday (today!) and ended up being a tad late to the evening session. We caught the last bit of people sharing again about people coming to Christ, and found that in total, over 13,000 people were approached, over 3,000 heard the Gospel message, and over 1,000 accepted or reconfirmed their faith in JESUS CHRIST as LORD!!! What an amazing encounter with the power of the Lord. When people shared, story after story was about the faithfulness of God and how He answers prayers. We can only pray that these new brothers and sisters will find accountability and continue to grow and seek after Him.

Roger Hershey spoke one last time about what it means to be warrior in the long term with a couple of great scenes from LOTR:TT and Gladiator. He made this great illustration that many times, we’re not excited for eternity because we have this skewed view that heaven is just sitting on clouds and singing the same worship song for 102894710934+ years, yet it’s so much more. Drawing from Rev 19-21 and the greatness of glorified bodies, a new earth, and being reunited with believers that have passed away (including one of Roger’s sons who passed away while serving the nation).

After evening session, there was a dance hosted in the ballroom which some people stuck around for. I tried doing the prayer journey on the side, then realized it was a bad idea when Black Eyed Peas was blasting in the next room the gals made dessert for the guys again, which was meant to be a surprise birthday cake and caking for Adam, but his brothers had come in and he couldn’t make it L We ended up eating it all by ourselves, then called it a night.

This morning being our day off, we all slept in. We finally caked/pudding/whip cream-ed Adam on the beach (more pictures later) and ended the week with some well-needed rest. In a bit we’re heading to Nic’s grandma’s place in PCB for a home-cooked meal!! Yummy

Please continue to pray for us as we rise early tomorrow morning and drive back to Ithaca (another 25ish hour drive, we assume). If you could also pray for our emotional and spiritual wellbeing as we transition back to busy Ithaca… to continue being in a posture of evangelism and feel the urgency for those on campus to know the Good News and come to know the Lord, when we know the devil will be continually tempting and planting lies into our heads.

Thanks guys!! Please continue to pray for Philly also as they end their week and transition back to Cornell.

With much love,

The gals.

PS. Best quote from JW during sharing time: “I didn’t know whether or not I should go commando… I was going to, but I didn’t know if it was because I was staff and felt like I should go, so then I decided not to… but during worship and I was praying, I felt God giving me the thumbs up so I decided to go commando.” – talking about commando cru (night-time EV)

Hello. It is 12:39 a.m. as we start this post. The guys will be posting for the first time. This is because we are lazy. We always promise in the beginning of the day to the girls that we will blog at night… However, we fall asleep, leaving the girls to blog.

For example, an unidentified male this morning stated, “Yes, I will blog tonight.”

This is him… right now as we blog.

12:42 a.m.

Okay.  Now for the details of the day.

We woke up at seven.  And by seven, we mean 7:10… or anything before 8.  Some had breakfast.  Some slept.  Today we had the most amazing cereal ever.  Fruit loops… but wait.  with GOLDEN BARS. =D  There was soy milk for those who are lactose intolerant.

Moving on, after we ate breakfast we had devotionals on Psalm 73.

vs. 25-26 “Whom have I in heaven but you?  And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

After devotionals we headed to the inner city missions office to assign tasks to our team.  We split into three teams.  The first team stayed at the inner city missions building to clean the floors.  The second team headed to the VBS location, the Nelson Playground, to clean up the area.  The third team went to Pastor Vega’s daughter’s backyard to clean up the glass and trash.  Many people in the area break the windows and take the aluminum inside of them to later sell for money, leaving the glass behind.

Tom’s finger got cut.  (n00b)

He’s okay.  He got bandaids.

It began to rain as we finished up our work.  Praise God we were able to finish without being drenched.  We headed back to eat lunch, delicious salami, bologna, and cheese sandwiches with “pasta” (ramen noodles).

After lunch, good news came to us.  Pastor Vega told our team that we would be able to paint the first coat of the buildings upper story today instead of doing two coats tomorrow.  So again, we split into groups.  One worked mainly on painting the flat white paint on the walls while the other team went to Nelson Park to do the third day of VBS.  The first group painted all of the walls in time.  Pretty much, everyone messed up their clothes and grew a lot.. of white acne.  =]

Today’s VBS Theme: Jesus is Lord

At VBS there were not many kids outside because of the earlier rain.  Inside the building, however, a few kids were studying.  We played games with them like connect four, checkers, and dominos.  And then we started the VBS by singing songs with them.  Josh, an hyper enthusiastic child, wanted to lead the songs and motions.  He came to the front with the leaders and sang his heart out.  Cute. Very cute.

“Making melodies in my heart…”  “When I get to heaven I’m gonna walk with Jesus…”  “Lord I lift your name on high.”

The skit was next.  Interesting.  Jorge was Peter the disciple in the story of Peter walking on water.  However, because the other disciples were painting back at the office, he assumed he was supposed to say all of the lines… or something like that.  So the skit ended up ending in a minute. HA.  And the kids asked… “Was that it?”  hahaha.  We answered yes.  “It was really short.”  “Do you want an encore?”  “Yes!”  So the second time around, the skit was .. a 100% more successful.  The skit was.. two minutes long.  =D

The craft was a bracelet telling the story of God.  The bracelet had six beads on them.  Black - Our sinful nature.  Red - Jesus’ blood paying the price.  Blue - Jesus’ blood washing our sin away.  White - We’re now pure in His eyes.  Green - now we grow, sanctification.  Yellow - the ultimate end, heaven.  The children were engaged in the activity and learned of the story of God and His son.

We played with them for a little more and then had to leave.

Dinner… was interesting.  Before dinner, we had an ultimate arm-wrestling SHOWDOWN!  It was intense.  On the girl’s side, Katie…  beast.  On the guy’s side, after Edgar showed up everyone by owning them, Ivan owned him, declaring himself as champion.

Dinner was scrumptious.  Turkey, mashed potatoes, and salad.  Yup yup.  Thank God for the hands of the cooks of this trip.  A lot of us had food coma after eating.  After dinner… and watching the Indiana team play boom chika boom boom boom boom, Julius, Pastor Vega’s son, spoke to us.  His passage was focused on Isaiah 61.

He spoke about the importance of community and the individual’s need to adopt a hospitable mind.  Also, he introduced two songs in different languages, one in Chinese and the other in.. an African language.  It was awesome to see his passion for worldy music and how it is used to worship our Father in heaven.

… So remember how we blogged earlier on how we, the guys, were lazy about blogging and just went to sleep because we were tired?  Yeah… So Edgar was with us blogging in the beginning… but now…

Before:

(Eric’s finger, Dave hidden behind the finger, Alex, Sinsub, and Edgar)

After:

He’s snoring loudly.

Anyways.  Moving on.  haha.

After having fellowship after dinner, we headed out the same place as Tuesday night to do outreach with sandwiches, clothing, and the gospel of John to hand out.  This time, we mixed up the groups, intermixing Cornell, Columbia, and Indiana University students.  It was truly a blessing for a lot of us as we were encouraged by fellow Christians, challenged by others, and able to help others.

To account on a personal encounter.  I met a man named Anthony with a drug addiction.  He had onced attended church until the addiction started.  To this day, he said he tried multiple programs to get out.  He says he wants to change, but his body won’t allow him to.  We engaged him about half an hour after he had had a dose of crack.  He had told us this.  He was very glad to have met us, telling us that it had made his day.  My group was just encouraged that God had used us to bring some hope into his life.  He said he wanted to change and would read the Gospel of John when he could.  Another encouraging thing was that… amidst his addiction to drugs and using money solely for drugs… he held onto a cross necklace that someone had given him earlier.  People had offered to buy it from him.  From the looks of it, it looked like to be of some worth.  However, Anthony refused and said… it was something he would hold onto.  He just.. had to.  Hopefully it was a sign that God had not let go of Anthony.  God is still moving in his heart.  And if we could pray for him, that’d be great.

After outreach we left back for home.  We parted with the other teams and returned home to our separate rooms.

The guys had to use the bathroom.. badly.  About eight of us were in line holding our pants.  Bad.

The girls invited us over to use their own bathroom… but it ended up being a surprise.

The guys entered the room to be welcomed by the girls and decorations.  They made us applesauce-base, blueberry cupcakes.  suhweeeeet.  And also, for each one of us, they had construction paper with encouraging statements on each of them hanging from the ceiling.  TO top it off, they had a banner type thing on the wall saying, “Thank you brothers.”  oh.  Lin-Lin drew sheep in relation to our character.  For example… Stu was a sheep with chopsticks in his fur.  (He usually.. no always, has chopsticks in his pants)

Thank you sisters =]

After, we headed over to the Columbia/Indiana team’s place to worship one last time together before they leave tomorrow.  Again, I was reminded of the passage in Revelation 7 when it talks of the Great Multitude in Heaven.  Just seeing all three teams worship together again singing… “How great is Our God” reminded me of the reason for why we were all here.  To proclaim to the ends of the earth, the city of Kensington, that God is great.

It was sweet time of praise.

We left refreshed and headed to bed.  And for us, guys, to blog.  Oh, we found out that the leaders debrief in Joy’s car.  HAHA… HAHA.  How akward is that.  Can you picture five people in one small car.. the two in the front seats turning around uncomfortably to the three in the back talking.  HA.  and a police car drives by while they’re praying at 1 in the morning.  haha.  Praise God.

Thank you for reading.  It’s 1:47 now.  A whole hour of blogging.  But it was worth it.  We owe it to the girls.

Oh, Tom and John just came back in a while ago.  And I was reminded.

Tom’s current status:  Okay after having gotten a cut finger, being pooped on by a bird, being shot in the eye by a stray rubberband by Dave Chen, smacked in the eye by a bible, and whipped in the eye by a sweater.

HA.

Okay.  goodnight.

-Alex, Eric, Dave… (Sinsub and Edgar fell asleep in the middle.  Tom and John came later.)

=D

Hey everyone! This is JW writing…

Praise the Lord, yesterday was an absolutely beautiful, warm, sunny day on the beach! I’ve spent a cumulative amount of about 2 months of my life in the state of Florida - and I had heard of the supposed warm sunny beaches of Florida, but until yesterday I had not experienced them! It was great to be out on the beach engaging students with the gospel – without a drop of rain! Finally got to use my sunscreen!

The night clubs “La Vela” and “Spinnakers” are the famous hot spots of PCB. Yesterday we headed east down the beach towards them and we stopped near “The Boardwalk” which is where MTV had their stage set-up. A couple of bands including ‘The All American Rejects’ were playing there.

We set up shop about 300 meters or from the stage. Don, Adam and I decided to use a tool called “Soularium” which is a set of 50 5” x 7” cards with different photographic images on them. Pictures including things like a family, a sunset, a barbed-wire fence, a guy covered in post-it notes, and other interesting images.

We set the cards up by flattening out a little section of sand about as big as a table and then sticking the cards into the sand so that they stood up out of the sand-arranged in a nice little formation. Students passing by would look over at it as they passed by, and we would invite them over to check out the pics and talk about God. We’d introduce ourselves, and then walk them through a few questions like:

Which 3 images would you pick to describe your life?

Which 3 images would you pick to describe your Spiritual journey?

Which 3 images would you pick to describe who God is?

After they picked the cards we’d ask them “Why?” and have them sort of explain their life, and beliefs to us in a dialog format.

Soularium works really well for getting into conversations on the beach. As we get to know people a little bit, and as we talk about beliefs, we are able to transition often to the gospel.

One another note, one of our roommates, Aaron (from NEBRASKA – yeah dogg!) just left this morning at around 7:30am to go knock on a guys door who he met last night to share the gospel. Last night the guy said he was “too drunk” to listen to the gospel and he told Aaron & his buddies to come find him in the morning at his hotel room, and he’d listen to the message then! I pray that their conversation goes well!

helloooo from philly!

it’s pretty late at night so i’ll keep this entry really short. we didn’t get to blog yesterday since we had a very long day and everyone was so exhausted. but here are some of the things we did yesterday and today…

tuesday, we woke up around 7, did our devotions, and did construction work at Pastor Frank’s office. the guys cleaned up and sorted out things that needed to get thrown out. the girls cleaned and organized some of the rooms in his office. we were very very efficient! we had some time before lunch so some of us went to the soup kitchen next to Pastor Frank’s office called St. Francis. we handed out gospel of John and talked to the people who came to eat lunch there.

we had hotdogs w/ chili and baked beans (oh! and the famous philly soft pretzels!) for lunch and headed out to do street EV/prayer walking in Kensington. we broke up into 4 different teams and talked to the people in the street or went into the stores to talk to people.

after that we had our first children’s ministry! the weather’s been really beautiful so we got to play with the kids and do children’s ministry outside at the playground. we had praise, skit (5 loaves and 2 fishes) on “Jesus, our Provider,” and arts & crafts. the kids were so so so adorable and cute!! there weren’t that many of them but still all of us got a chance to interact with them.

when we came home after children’s ministry, we went over to the Columbia/Rutgers and Indianan University Teams apartment and had dinner. we made sandwiches for homeless outreach afterwards. we made about 100 sandwiches and headed out to Center City of Philadelphia. our team broke into two groups. group 1 stayed in the “LOVE park” and group 2 went down to the underground train station. we handed out gospel of John, sandwiches, water bottles, and sweaters to homeless people. personally for me, it was a time where i saw a lot of brokeness. seeing some people with no direction, light, and hope was very heart-breaking and i felt very heavy-hearted afterwards. but it was definitely a good burden that i think God gave it to all of us. when we came back from Center City, we lifted the people who we met up in prayer. we are conituously praying for them that God will be their source of hope and joy and that they will find comfort in Him only.

TODAY! we woke up and after devotions, went to the other team’s apartment to talk about Coffeehouse at Pastor Frank’s church, Urban Worship Center (UWC). once again, we broke up into two groups. group 1 went to the baseball field near the playground we do children’s ministry at, to clean up the field. group 2 stayed in the office to organize and clean up. some of us, again, went to St. Francis after doing work at the office. it was surprising and very encouraging to see how so many homeless people were receptive and open to the gospel. it is our prayer that God will water their souls and that they will see and understand His abundant love towards them.

we came back to our apartments for lunch (amazing stir fry with KIMCHI!!! kimchi’s a korean spicy cabbage thing). we had time to rest a little bit after lunch and then went to the playground again for children’s ministry. we had our ministry outdoor, once again, and it was really a lot of fun! children there are very open to us and bright! today’s theme was “Jesus, our Friend.” Anthony, who helps us organize the children’s ministry, ordered pizza for all of us for doing such a great job at the baseball field this morning

we had dinner with the other teams at the office and went to Pastor Frank’s church to have Coffeehouse with the youth group of the church. the Coffeehouse was to encourage the youth group kids at church through skits, testimonies, and praise. 4 people shared their testimonies, including Jorge, and all of them were very very encouraging. it was so evident that God was, is, and will be working in their lives. Pastor Blake from Indiana Team rapped! and Larry sang his orignial song to the group. the UWC youth group prepared a skit on praying and i’m hoping to post a link of that on here soon!

afterwards, we debriefed as an entire group and this was so so good too for some of the brothers and sisters shared their struggles, praises, reflections, etc with the rest of the team. we are really accepting one another as a family and a body of Christ and personally to me, this was such a blessing. it was encouraging to see people praying for one another, saying encouragements, and just really showing love. pray for us so that we’ll be contiuously be a blessing to each other

i can share so much more but it’s 2AM and i’m not even sure if i’m making any sense. hopefully we can post more entries tomorrow when our brains working… on that note, thank you for reading our blogs and for keeping us in your prayers! and praise be to God for He’s been so faithful to us

Hello from PCB again!!!

Yesterday was our first full day — and through the nervousness and anxiety, the Lord was able to provide and lead hearts to salvation and redemption! In the morning, we were equipped with Knowing God Personally (aka KGP) booklets that we could use to share with people. It includes an adaptation of the four spiritual laws, plus a series of questions to lead people to understand the Gospel message. After a quick lunch, we were off!

Team Cornell was sent to La Vela, the largest nightclub in the United States. After a time of prayer, we were off in groups of three to share the good news. We were also given questionnaires, so this was mostly our entry point for the afternoon. The weather was also a little rainy, which made witnessing that much more difficult. My group (JW, Sarah and I) spoke to a few groups of guys from various universities. Most of them had been part of the church at one point in their lives, but were now mostly doing their own thing.

After coming back, the gals cooked dinner for the guys (baked pasta with meatballs, garlic bread and fresh salad – yum yum), but before we pulled a fast one on the guys by saying we only made one bowl of pasta!

At night, we had the privilege of hearing Roger Hershey speak. He shared with us from Ephesians 6 under the theme of being a Warrior for Christ. His own testimony is so powerful and reminding us that we’re involved in a very spiritual battle where we’re fighting for people’s souls and not against them. He reminded us also that Satan tells us horrendous lies and we must take up our sword, or the Word (rhema) of God to fight against him. After, most of us went to Commando Cru, where we EV-ed around the pools, hot tubs, and beachside near our complex.

Yesterday morning was another good morning, with an introduction to the Soularium – a series of 50 images where we ask students to choose three images to describe their lives, spiritual lives, and God. We used these this afternoon at Pineapple Willie’s and the main PCB Boardwalk (right next to MTV’s spring break bash – look for us on tv!) Nez and I had a couple of good conversations with people about the Gospel and Jesus. We even spoke to a woman from Japan who never even heard of the concept of God before. After, the guys made the gals hamburger tortilla wraps.

In the evening, Roger Hershey spoke again about being a warrior when we don’t feel like it, battling three main feelings – inadequacy, shame, and pride. Commando Cru was on at night again – most of the Cornell gals went back to the Spinnakers/La Vela nightclub scene to once again share. The scene changes at night though – it’s an entirely different world. I was feeling a little anxious being thrown into the lions, with fears of being harassed by drunken men, being run into by drunk drivers, or even getting separated from the group. The mission field is much larger than any of us have expected, I believe…. I spent the majority of the evening talking to an ex-drug dealer sitting across the street from Spinnakers who is being deported next week, pleading with him that heaven and hell are real places with real consequences. The Lord protected us through the evening and

Please continue to pray for us through the week:

- Pray for the hearts of the EV-ers themselves. The Cornell team is starting to notice a trend of a very numbers-based success mentality amongst the conference-ers – please pray that God will humble our hearts for why we’re here – for HIS glory and not our own.

- Pray for those whom we’ve talked to by name – Amy, Matt, Brennan, Ashley, Miranda, Tasha, Kay, Kyle, Eric, John, Cody, and so many more. Pray that God will cultivate a desire to know him more in their hearts.

- Pray for our team as we continue to press on through the week. It’s easy to be tired, weary and discouraged when it seems that no fruit is coming out of our ministry – please pray for trust and faith in the Lord’s ultimate purpose.

Thanks guys for your prayers. Our eyes are being open to the desperate need for Christ and Truth beyond the surface. We’ll try to add one more blog before we heard out!

Wendy

To recap what seems like a long day of ministry…

I think it’s safe to say it seems like a long day for most of us by sole virtue that we’ve done quite a fair amount on our first official day of ministry. Our day started with construction work at the ICM office. We cleaned floors above the office currently undergoing major renovations and organized storage rooms with boxes of things Pastor Vega has accumulated over the years–things he’s accumulated after 23 years of ministry, meaning it was a lot. haha

We had lunch with the Columbia/Indiana/Rutgers team and headed out to the streets for prayer walking. We walked down the street well-known for its drug-dealing, prostitution, and violence. In fact, Pastor Vega informed us that it was the number one hotspot in Philadelphia known for its illegal activities.

Soon after, we headed out to the neighborhood playground for children’s ministry. Although we were unable to carry out our plans for VBS, we spent the time playing basketball and football with the older kids, while other members of the team spent time with the younger children.

After dinner with the other schools’ teams, we went to the church for praise and for Pastor Vega’s testimony. I think I would be doing Pastor Vega, and most especially, God an injustice by trying to explain the incredible means by which God has used Pastor Vega as a light to Kensington in just one blog entry. In short, through much affliction, sin, and a growing sense of void, God used Pastor Vega in his inadequacy to pour out His grace to this part of the city.

At the end, I think the majority of us returned from our day contemplative of what we’ve seen and heard. The streets of Kensington were enough to convince us of the area’s desperate need for God’s sovereign love and mercy. Many of us shared what seemed to be common feelings of fear of our environment and judgment by the people we were praying for. Thankfully, these things brough to our realization just how inadequate we were as people and how grateful we were to have a loving and powerful God to turn to.

Personally for me, I was blessed to find that no matter how rough around the edges the children that we enountered seemed, children were still children. They were still innocent enough to find enjoyment in what all children need, which is simply people willing to give them the time of day and an encouraging smile for them to continue laughing and playing.

I hope you guys continue to pray for the teams here in Philadelphia and pray for the children and adults here who live amongst such crime, addiction, and violence. Despite the sin and destitution currently pervading this side of Philadelphia, as Pastor Vega continually reiterates, there is light at the end of the tunnel and God will answer to the hope of many who seek something more than what this world can offer.

-Esther L

Hello everyone from Panama City Beach!

This is Wendy reporting from Spring Break Central! We left Friday afternoon around 5pm and safetly arrived in PCB Saturday at 6pm after 25 hours of continous-ish driving (minus many bathroom breaks, waffle houses, and stopping at Adam’s house in Atlanta). Praise God for keeping us safe from many late hours, dense fogs, falling rocks, and crazy traffic!

Joe and JW passed out after driving.

Coming into the city was the most surreal experience… all around us were college students who were woot-ing and drinking and being .. spring-breakers, essentially. There’s this tension between our ultimate mission and those of the other college kids here… Our hotel is on the ‘Strip’, which is a 8-mile long street of bars, clubs, hotels, and food joints right on the beachside where the wildest partying happens. We’re actually only a mile away from MTV’s spring break madness, so maybe you’ll see some of us on TV sharing the good news

Yesterday was our first full day (after much, much needed sleep the night before). The girls (Sarah, Jeanne, Nez and myself) are staying in a mini-suite and the guys (plus two guys from Nebraska) are staying a few buildings down. We went to Cici’s lunch buffet for lunch, then ran to the local Walmart for groceries and forgotten items.

After, Nic led us in a time of devotions, sharing, and prayer for our time here — we went through Judges 7 and the story of Gideon. Just like God is faithful to Gideon, He will be and remain faithful to the 1000+ students here proclaiming the good news. Some of us feel anxious, weary, and unprepared for the task that lies above us, but we know that because of this, there is no way that any fruit is of our own strength but solely the power of the Lord (Judges 7:2-3).

Last night was also our first evening session — imagine 1,000 college students, jumping up and down, praying and praising God, in one ballroom in spring break central. Crazy right?! It’s pretty wild (but in a good, holy type of wild hehe). After, we had a time of prayer for the spring breakers, then had woman time with Christy (the gals did — Adam and Joe did ‘pre-EV’ on the beach, and the others went to Sonic hehe) talking about beauty and what it means to find satisfaction in the Lord’s definition of Beauty. The guys also had some man-time in the car with man-issue topics. I’m really thankful to all three of them (Nic, JW and Christy) for leading these times and constantly being here for us in their goofy and encouraging ways. Then off to bed!

Now it’s morning and only half an hour away from our first morning/teaching session!!! I am eating a newly acquired blueberry bagel as I type this

Additional things to pray with us for!!

• Today is our first full day of training, EV, and debrief at night. I have no idea what to expect.. please pray!! Pray for the staff who are leading us through training and faithfully shepherding over us.
• Pray for the students we’ll talk to — that they will have open hearts to the good news that is true and good. Pray for their safety and wellbeing as many, many are constantly drunk and stumbling about the strip.
• Pray for us and the other Believers here that we may rely solely on the strength of GOD to be our provision. We’re still tired and recovering from our drive down, and the weather is pretty wet so please pray against discouragement and frustration. Please also pray for our team specifically that we may be have unity and accountability as we fight through the week.

Thanks so much guys! We’ll be sure to try and update you guys more often with stories and good news

over and out!

wendy + rest of cornell EV team (plus jack!)

Hello everyone!

Greetings from Philly again!

Joanna here AGAIN!

HAHA I might be designated blogger but we’re not sure yet hehe.

Anyways, today was quite restful and exciting all at the same time.

So today we got to sleep in a tad bit and had breakfast starting at 9:15am!

We had all different types of cereal and breakfast ended around 9:45am.

We had individual devotions for about 30 to 40 minutes and then had small group devotional for 15 minutes. Our passage was Joel 2 in case anyone was hoping to look it over! 

After that we went to have lunch at the Columbia and Indiana apartment! Hehe, all we do is eat.  

We ate lunch and had fellowship with the other teams and it was fun and edifying!

Then we went to church, and I have to say coming from a traditional Presbyterian Korean church, it was quite an experience!

Praise was really hard to describe. It’s like the experiences that you can’t really understand unless you experience it. Praise was alive, refreshing, powerful and intimate. The people in the church praising were truly worshipping with their hearts and their bodies (literally!).

Everyone was alive and animated and it was really different.

The message was also great, Pastor Vega spoke and really the way he speaks is powerful and moving. He also had people come up to the front who needed to be prayed for, and the act of prayer became something that the entire church became a part of.

For a first hand testimony ask Jorge from Cru? Maybe he’ll share if he’s comfortable! 

We prayed for people who were depressed, sick and in need of healing and we all became one body despite our differences and came to God to ask Him to work in the people’s lives. And really God did work today.

After service we came back home and just rested. (SIESTA!!!) I actually fell asleep for two hours so I don’t really know what happened. Hehe. But it was good sleep!

Then we had AWESOME DINNER OH DEAR REALLY GOOD!!!!!! We had Spanish rice and really good pork. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like something you had to eat in order to understand. Anyways there were also green beans. Hehe. The lady who cooked for us was Yvonne! She was awesome! Hehe. Tomorrow we’re having chicken apparently. It’ll be awesome!!!

Anyways, after dinner we broke off into our assigned VBS groups and prepped fro tomorrow! I’m in praise and we just practiced the motions and wrote out the lyrics! I’m really excited for VBS tomorrow. HEHEHEHEHE.

Then we went to IU & Columbia’s apartment and just jammed and prayed together which was absolutely amazing! So many people coming together to praise as one body is truly amazing. I was really touched and blessed. Life is awesome, God is awesome.

Then we came back and taught everyone the motions and it was AWESOME!!!!

Then we just broke up and are currently getting ready to sleep as I blog.

So a couple of prayer request would be:

1) People are sick so pray for their quick healing so it won’t interfere with ministry!
2) Some people are having trouble going to the bathroom and it’s really unhealthy! So pray that they’ll have bowel movements so that they’ll be able to stay healthy! (I know this is sort of gross but it’s actually a problem!)
3) Pray that the people of Philadelphia will be open to our ministries and God’s works!
4) Pray that our team will be unified!
5) Pray for our first day!!! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYYYYY!!

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE. okay. That’s really all I have to say. Hopefully maybe it’ll be me blogging again tomorrow! If not I hope you enjoy whoever else decides to blog! Good night and have an awesome MONDAY!!!!

Greetings from Philly!

Joanna here blogging for the team  

We have safely arrived in Philly after a long approximately 4 hour drive.

We left Cornell around 9:45am in 5 cars and had quite an interesting drive as we all drove in a 5-car caravan.

Haha, it was quite an adventure!

We did stop for an hour lunch break which was nice too 

Anyways, when we arrived, we met the Columbia team too!

After short introductions we were led to our apartment where we’ll be staying for the next week. Truthfully, the apartments were quite dirty and dusty but with the lead of Sandy & co. we cleaned down the entire girls’ apartment and we can walk around without shoes on! Hehe. We made a no shoes in the apartment rule! Asian style!

After the extensive cleaning we had some down time and played some fun games and got to relax. Lot of fun.

While we were cleaning, Pastor Vega came and met all of us and told us briefly of what would be happening at night. So we slowly started preparing dinner for our team, the Columbia team and the Indiana Team. While we were preparing the dinner, the Columbia team and the Indiana team came to our apartment and we were able to interact with everyone!

It was really great to see such a good number of people in one area who had devoted their week of break to serve God! There are definitely a lot of great and interesting people on all the teams. I even met a girl (i forgot her name  =X) who is in the ROTC at Indiana for the Air Force! Awesome!!!! Haha.

Everyone was really kind and really excited to be in Philly and work with each other which I think is totally AWESOME!!!! 

Unfortunately, due to the limited area of room, they had to go back to their apartments and ate in our individual areas. Spaghetti in meat sauce! YUMMMMMMM!!!

Then we kept ourselves entertained for quite a bit until Pastor Vega gave us a brief rundown of what would be happening for the rest of the week!

I think a lot of us are very open to what God has in store for us this week. We know that having humanly expectations will get us nowhere , but when we are open to what God’s great and amazing works, anything and everything is possible.

Everyone of us on this missions trip needs our hearts to be broken and pray that God will show his love for us and the people of Philadelphia.

Please please please please pray for us! Keep us in your prayers! And please pray for the people here and for Pastor Vega’s ministry!

Until we meet again!

Good night!

Hello everyone!

We’re leaving to Kensington, PA tomorrow at 9AM from Ithaca, NY!! We have 5 cars driving down and couple of our other members are coming in individually throughout the weekend. Please keep us in your prayers…

1. Pray that the team would submit to God’s will and obey.
2. Pray that the leaders would be humble before the Lord and the team and seek the Lord’s will and help, rather than relying on past experiences and our own strength.
3. Pray for God to grow the seeds that we hope to plant in the people we meet in Kensington.
4. Pray that we would be safe, spiritually and physically.
5. Pray that God would use this trip to convict some or all of the team members to commit their lives to full time urban ministry.
6. Pray that we would have team unity.

Our team members are…

Alex Lee
Aubrey Ralph
Charlene Chan
Johnson Cheng
Christen Park
Dave Chen
Dennis Kwon
Edgar Lei
Eric Yau
Esther Lee
Ife Samuel-Adedoyin
Isaac Lee
Janice Cheong
Joanna Lee
John Sullivan
Jorge Pereda
Joy Lee
Katie Lovett
Laurence Lin
Lin-lin Wang
Min Moon
Minji Kang
Nancy Blanks
Sandy Kim
Sharilyn Brandel
Sharon Kim
Sin Sub Jeong
Stuart Hanberg
Thomas Rho
Tiffany Jones
Walt Raudenbush

We will update you guys everyday on how we are doing in philly! Hope you all have safe and refreshing spring breaks wherever you are

-Philly Team ‘09