Monday, July 21, 2008

My First Month as a Jayhawk

Dear Friends-

Hey, how's everybody doing? I hope this email finds you well! I thought I would give you an update on my life and what I have been up to! I have officially been in Lawrence for five weeks now and working for one month today. (for those of you who might not know, I am the new campus minister at KU.) The ministry consists of three actual undergrad students and a couple of grad/non-traditional students; when you add the whole group together (including those who are older but still do things with us), the group comes to approximately 12 or so.

Things are going well here. I am working on getting everything together for the incoming students; they begin arriving in three and a half weeks, which is insane! We are trying to get everything geared up for them to be here. I have 178 new contacts who are interested in our ministry. I know that not all of those will stick; in fact, MOST of them WON'T stick around. but if only 8% keep coming to things that doubles the amount of people within our group, which would be amazing! My goal is to have approximately 25 students by the end of the school year, but if God wants to send 150 I am going to be ok with that!

Right now I am teaching a class over Deuteronomy on Sunday mornings called "Advice for a New Adventure," examining how Moses' advice to the people in the midst of their time of transition fits the situation the Hawks for Christ are facing. They have new leadership, a new vision, and a new group of people, but they are still part of the people of God (much like the n ew generation of Israelites at the beginning of Deuteronomy!) I will be starting a class on either spiritual disciplines or the book of John on Wednesday evenings in August, and teaching on "The Life of Christ" in our Thursday evening Bible studies on campus. I also have a number of new students who are wanting to either host or lead Bible studies/prayer groups in the dorms and Frat Houses, which is awesome! ! I know God will do some great things through these endeavors.

I did my first baptism in Lawrence two weeks ago. Tim and Blair started coming to Southside frequently about the time I showed up; she had grown up in the church and he had grown up nominally Catholic, but had been attending with her for the past 6 years. He discovered that you didn't have to know everything to put Christ on in baptism, so I got the joy of baptizing him on Thursday, July 10th. It was kinda funny though; someone had cranked the heater on the baptistry up, so when I stepped into the water the thermometer read 120 degrees! We had to dump 4 10lb bags of ice in and then run cold water for 10 minutes before it was even cool enough to get into. We wanted to wash his sins away, not boil them out!

Right now I am just trying to get our ministry's name out and about on campus. I am working on some new ways to go about doing that, but if you have any suggestions they would be GREATLY appreciated!

That has been the last month, in a nutshell. In the next two weeks I am going to the Global Missions Conference in Dallas (so if any of you are going to be there let's do lunch), and the National Campus Ministry Seminar in Denver, and in between Megan comes home from five weeks in Japan. (I can't wait for that!) Three awesome things within a week!

I hope everything is going well and that God is blessing you guys in so many ways. Write back and let me know how things are going for you guys. I feel kinda out of touch, removed from all of you. God bless you as you work in his Kingdom!


In Christ,
Daniel McGraw
Hawks for Christ -- Campus Minister

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