Essential Day 4

Things got a bit busy towards the end of Essential, so it's now Saturday night as I'm looking back at Thursday! I hope I can remember what happened.

This week most people have been trying to get to the 8am prayer meetings in our small groups. It's so weird to walk across campus at that time of the day for a prayer meeting for at least a couple of reasons: 1) I'm seldom out-and-about on campus at that time of day generally (I have little reason to be in a standard week!)) 2) It's very bizarre to walk across campus and find that everyone that you pass is a Christian (other CU people going to their prayer meetings in different halls!)

The lunchbar today was all about suffering (where was God in the tusnami kind-of theme). Lots of good points came out of this, such as numerous examples in the past of God using evil for good, the fact that we can't always understand everything that God does - some things are hidden from us (Dueteronomy 29:29) and that bad things shouldn't really come as a surprise to us as we're living in a fallen world. It was awesome to see the chaplaincy absolutely packed - every seat taken and not much food left (the fact that there was only ham and biscuits left at the end prompted the speaker to say that if you wanted more food all you could have was "a ham biscuit"! Oh dear!). A couple of international students from Globe came along, one of whom I attempted to relay the gist of the talk to afterwards as he missed most of it (although not very succesfully I feel :( ). Nonetheless it was great to have conversations with these two guys - it's always encouraging to see people searching, especially those that you know. I pray that they might continue doing so.

During mid-morning and mid-afternoon I had a few lectures to attend and used the time around those to do a little work and to take a brief nap. In the evening though it was back to Essential stuff and quite a novel event. In the Cryfield halls we were operating a "text-a-pancake" service, whereby we put up some posters and told people about the opportunity to text us asking for a pancake and we'd deliver it to their room or kitchen. This was basically a chance for us to get out there in amongst people on our campus and be a presence as a CU (lots of similar events were going on in other halls: text-a-toastie, grill a Christian (that's a metaphorical title that one!)). There were just over 15 of us, so we split into groups of about 5, with one group going to each Cryfield Hall. I went to Cryfield 3, where I used to live. :)

For a couple of hours we cooked up some yummy pancakes and asked everyone that we saw if they wanted one, responded to text orders and so on. With every pancake that we gave away we tried to give away a copy of John's gospel and a flyer advertising Friday's Essential events. A few of us got into prolonged conversations with people about things of a Christian nature and we wanted to make the most of those opportunities. However, this wasn't our out-and-out goal this time: we simply wanted to serve our campus and make ourselves known as a CU and publicise our other events, taking our opportunities as and when they came along to go deeper with people.

In light of these aims, I think our evening was a success. In Cryfield 3 we gave away around 50 pancakes I reckon and I believe the other two groups managed to give away at least that many, many with free copies of John's gospel and Essential publicity. We got to meet and chat to loads of people - many just for a short while, but one or two for a good deal longer. Thus, I think text-a-pancake went well. I hope we might have the opportunity to follow this up in these halls before too long.

I ended the day by going to the 24/7 prayer room for an hour - think that was quite a good way to end the day actually, and thanks to my nap earlier on in the day I didn't feel quite as totally exhausted as I would have done otherwise. The prayer room (located in Westwood Church, which is situated just off campus) is, in my opinion, a really encouraging place to spend time. People have written prayers and scripture passages all over the walls (well, actually on paper on the walls, but you know what I mean ;) ). There were some poignant things written up there from which I was able to take some strength. And of course it was a good opportunity to pray for our campus and the rest of Essential. The one day that remains.