India Daze

The day-to-day of my life in India is quite different from my American life where the days felt rhythmic.  When I first got to India, I felt like my days would never find a pattern, but I think they are beginning to fall into a rhythm.

I have now been in India for two months. Throughout July, I lived more of a nomadic life, staying in hotels for the first few weeks then moving to an apartment and finally to my new home with my roommate, Amy, at the beginning of August. Now that I have lived here for two months,  once unfamiliar things are becoming familiar. For instance, constantly hearing a foreign language, smelling strange spices, and seeing all sorts of animals while driving my scootie on the streets. Who knew it would become normal to see a camel grazing or a cow mooing right outside my window?!

During August, Amy and I have kept very busy! On India's Independence Day we participated in a children's program with all the kids from our church. We had so much fun with them: sharing Bible stories, playing charades, running out of gluesticks, and eating cookies!

I have met many new friends and spent much of my time developing these friendships whether over coffee or a meal or by catching the latest Bollywood release! (I have yet to see a movie in theaters in English.) Amy and I are also members at a gym in one of the malls near our house, and we have begun teaching aerobics classes there. We teach Zumba, Pilates, and Spinning. It's a lot of fun and a great way to meet more people, women especially.

Every Friday, Amy and I, along with some of our Indian friends, walk around a local neighborhood. Through this time, we have gotten to meet many people and even been invited into some of their homes! It's always an eye-opening experience to walk in less trafficked areas, seeing the way India lives and going into their homes, experiencing their hospitality. I'm so glad to be here in India and share in the work being done here!

Jai Masih Ki (Praise the Lord),
Rachel

College Welcome Back Events!!!

Last week the Clemson Community welcomed over 4,000 new students and many others who were returning for another school year! With all of these students coming into town, Generations LINK's College team was especially busy!

We planned a week of "Welcome Back Events" for new and returning students! The week included an ice cream social, trivia and coffee night, lots of ultimate frisbee, and more! We also made a point to have a presence at the events that Clemson puts on for the students, such as the Welcome Back festival and the organizations fair! The picture below is the publicity we used to get the word out to students about our events! As you can see, we are not done yet!

After all of our labor in planning and preparing, the first week went great! Praise the Lord! We met and were able to make connections with over 400 college students! On Sunday we also had Starting Point after every service where we fed all of the college students some fried chicken as they learned about Connecting Point Groups! We had around 300 college students come to starting point interested in learning about joining a CP group!

We are so grateful for the Lords faithfulness as he is enabling us to reach the Clemson community with the gospel message. Pray that we continue to labor for the Lord and find hope and strength in him alone. Pray also for all of the college students that are now back on campus. Pray that those who are lost will be sought out and made into worshippers of our great God!

In Christ,
Jennifer Gardner
Generation LINK Staff- College Ministry

Summer LINK Clemson: Week 9

I cannot believe that another week has come and gone with Summer LINK Clemson. It seems not too long ago that we were having our orientation and getting to know one another! Now we’re getting close to the last week of serving with Crosspoint staff this summer.

This week has been, like many others have written before me, an incredible week of fellowship, teaching, and learning. We had the honor of gathering at the Welborn’s (yes, parents of BTChubs..) home this Monday night for Equip Night. You want to know what a true Southern home-cooked meal looks like? Well let me just tell you how Kathy Welborn blessed the stomachs of all the Clemson Summer LINKers: picture some home-made fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, squash casserole, rice, fruit, salad, two home-made red-velvet cakes, macadamia nut cookies, white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, turtle cookies, and your choice of either vanilla ice cream or cookie dough ice cream. Can you say YUMMY!! We were truly blessed and full of happiness and satisfaction. It was also an immense blessing for us to hear the testimonies of Mark and Kathy Welborn and how obedient they have been to the Lord’s calling on their lives. Twice in their walks with the Lord, they have been faithful to the Lord and have given up everything to help start a church. Mark reminded us that we can respect God and fear Him, but we must understand what it truly means to love Him. Our quiet times, our fellowship and discipleship with other believers, and our prayers should change as our love for Him grows. We’re thankful for their obedience and faithfulness to help start Crosspoint Church and for continuing to faithfully serve the body of Christ! We continued our study of Robert Coleman’s Master Plan of Evangelism by discussing Jesus’ method of delegation unto His disciples to spread the truth of the good news. We pray that we would be teachable disciples of Christ and learn how to delegate to fellow believers in order to teach them more about Jesus and watch them grow in His ministry of evangelism and discipleship!

We celebrated another special day this week on Thursday night by honoring Miss Katrina Ross’ 20^th birthday! We all got to indulge in some delicious chocolate cupcakes (thanks to Miss Emilyn Banfield) and sing happy birthday to one special lady with a beautiful servant’s heart before CP group. To end the summer socials on a high note, Summer LINK Clemson traveled to Atlanta this past Friday to spend the day at Six Flags. This was a day all of us were looking forward to and expecting to be the highlight of our summer! Although it was a hot summer day, we all had a blast riding rollercoasters (multiple times), walking around the gift shops, and exploring the water park to cool off a bit. Nothing like the thrill of a rollercoaster to drive out the fear in us and draw us closer together as a group!

We’re so thankful to be under the teaching of Crosspoint this summer and to be pushed and challenged by the Lord in evangelism this summer. Ken taught on living in light of Christ’s return last Sunday and it has been reigning in our hearts all week. It completely changes and impacts your day when you put the second coming of Christ and His promise of restoration on the forefront of your mind. We are thankful and grateful to be in prayer for those that we have gotten to have gospel-centered conversations with and we pray for more! God is Sovereign and we are humbled to be used by Him to further His Kingdom.

We pray for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ serving in Boston, Honduras, and India and our hearts are with them! We know God is doing wonderful things in and through them.

Laura Gann

Boston Update (week 4)

This past week we were able to do homeless ministry for the first time on our trip.  On Wednesday afternoon we had a training session on homeless ministry. We learned a lot about homeless statistics in Boston and how to engage, love, and serve the homeless. That night we went to Boston Commons and handed out socks and sandwiches to the homeless people that were there. These things served as icebreakers as we were then able to talk to these people individually about their lives and pray for them about the things that they face. I was blown away by how the Lord can use such small things to make such a big difference. The majority of the people were so thankful to have someone to talk to who was really concerned with what was going on with their lives. For some of these people it was the only conversation they had all day. The Lord really showed me how we could display the gospel to these people just by loving them and praying for them. We ended the time with singing and prayer. This was one of the most memorable moments of this trip for me personally, as we saturated downtown Boston with the praise and worship of our Savior.

On Saturday we had another encounter with the homeless as we helped Hope Fellowship Church with Hope Café. We helped prepare breakfast and serve breakfast to the homeless as they came in. We were able to have good conversations with them while they ate.  A man from the church shared the changing power of the gospel.  Some of us were able to take the leftovers and hand them out at the T station. This was a really cool ministry that they have at the church and I am so thankfulthat we were able to have a small part of it.

As we enter this next week a lot of our energy and thoughts are going to be on Community Fun Night as we try to plan and prepare. Please be in prayer for this event as we try to effectively engage the community and reach people with the gospel.

Posted by: Caitlyn Carlile

Summer LINK Honduras Week 4 Wrap-up

     It's been a great week here in Honduras. We thoroughly enjoyed our visitors, the Strawderman family, VBS at the dump was a success, and we've had great success in our continuing ministries at the dump and bilingual school.

     Yesterday as the Pirkles dropped the Strawderman family at the airport, we continued our schedule with the bilingual school and soccer games at the fields in the community of Lucinda. We started the day at the school by helping the sixth grades students memorize the Honduran National Anthem. Afterwards, we read one-on-one with third grade students. These times of working in small groups with students are my favorite because they allow us to build deeper relationships with the kids and enter into gospel-centered conversations.

     After an afternoon of soccer, we joined the Pirkle kids for dinner at Letty's, a local restaurant near the hospital grounds. It was a great time of fellowship with them and another great chance for us to enjoy local cuisine. We capped off the night with a movie night in our living room.
     Today we traveled to La Ceiba to do some shopping and grab lunch at the mall. We also planned an outreach for our time at the mall and printed off some Spanish versions of The Story. We divided our team into three groups and gave out internet cards with the link to The Story online. Each group had great encounters with both believers and non-believers. We even met a guy whose wife lives in South Carolina! Today was a great opportunity for us to be intentional with the gospel. J.C. was able to have a great conversation with a young believer and encourage him in his faith. Logan and Becca talked to two older women who were devout Catholics. I was able to talk to two young girls who were headed for college. When I shared the gospel with them, they said that it was familiar to them because of the bible classes they had in school. So I was able to encourage them, and leave them with a link to The Story. I'm really thankful we had this opportunity today.
     Tonight, our guys are helping out with the last movie night in Rio Estaban and tomorrow we will be returning to one of the local churches we've attended. We are planning on spending the afternoon tie-dying t-shirts and going to the waterfall with Johnny, one of the kids from school.

Please pray for our time with Johnny tomorrow. We hope to spend the afternoon encouraging Johnny, teaching him about discipleship, and spurring him on to steadfastness in sharing the gospel with his friends and classmates.

     Post by Kimberly Sherman
     Pictures by Elizabeth Pirkle and Dan Strawderman

Generation LINK and the NACPF

Check out Generation LINK Director Jeremy Chasteen's recent post on the NACPF blog! http://www.nacpf.org/follow-us/nacpf-blog/

SummerLINK Honduras - Strawderman Week!

Our time in Honduras continues to be blessed by the Lord. This last week we have had the privilege of having the Strawderman family coming alongside our team and the Pirkles to serve the Lord in Honduras. They arrived last Thursday evening, and took Friday to rest and get a tour of the ministries around here, such as the hospital and the children's center.

While they were learning the ropes, we continued our ministry at the bilingual school in Rio Esteban. Friday was a crazy day at the school. They have been doing some cultural awareness things with Indians, and Friday was designated for a presentation and a contest for the "best dressed indian." Three girls from the school were dressed as cute little indians and had to go through a series of things to be judged on. A few of our team members were asked to be the judges. The excitement from the contest distracted the students from school work tremendously. It was hard to find gospel opportunities with such short attention spans; however we did enjoy getting to spend the day further building our relationships with the children and serving in whatever way the teachers needed us. That afternoon everyone went to the recreation field in Lucinda to spend time playing soccer and investing in the people in the community. It was a great day for the Strawderman's to reunite with the Pirkles and for our team to meet them and simply spend time in sweet fellowship. We ended our day with another delicious homecooked meal provided by the Pirkle family! We have been so blessed by their family's servants heart!




Saturday we continued our ministry at the Dump in La Ceiba. Our most recent visits there have looked a little bit different than they have previously. With the extra hands from the Strawderman family, we wanted to attempt to do a VBS with the children at the Dump. Nothing like this had ever been tried there before. None of us knew what to expect going into this at all. Most of the children living there have never had any kind of organized activity, and definitely have not really been exposed to the great truths of the gospel. We really wanted to be intentional about sharing Christ's love with them and providing fun things for them to do that they may not have the opportunity to experience before.  Everyone did a great job splitting up tasks and just being faithful to serve wherever someone was needed. The first day definitely was difficult, but overall it went very well. We were able to evaluate what we did well, and what things we needed to change for the next two visits, on Tuesday and Thursday.

Sunday we spent the morning studying through some passages in 2 Kings with some of the other missionaries on the compound. Afterwards we got to spend some time worshipping the Lord through song, lead by our very own, Kelsey and JC. It was a wonderful time praising the Lord. That afternoon we spent time resting and enjoying each other in fellowship at the beach until the rain came. Sunday evening we went the this place called Rosie's. Rosie is a local from Rio Esteban who runs a restaurant on the beach. We communicated what kind of meat we wanted, whether it was chicken, shrimp, or lobster, a few days ahead of time. Local fishermen catch whatever we requested and Rosie had it all cooked and ready to go once we arrived. The food was delicious! We had rice, fried plantains, and chips and salsa along with whichever meat we chose. We all enjoyed our meal and watching God's beautiful creation as the sun was setting over the water. It was impossible to look at that and not praise the Lord! After dinner we were surprised with a dance by some of the people in the Rio Esteban community. The Garifuna is a culture that is primarily only in Rio Esteban. According to Rosie the culture is going to die out if the older generation doesn't continue to teach the younger generation about it. Therefore, the dances we saw were native dances from the Garifuna people in the community. The beginning some younger girls in pink skirts did a little dance lead by a beat from some drummers and singing from Rosie. Soon after these men with headdresses came out and did more native dancing. It was kind of odd to see at first, but it was cool to get to see this part of their culture. They even were intentional about getting us to participate with them. They pulled some of our team out on the dance floor and tried to teach them some of the dance. It was a fun night full of laughter and good food!

Monday we jumped right back into going to the bilingual school. The Strawderman's were troopers and got up at the crack of dawn and accompanied us. We really enjoyed getting to have them at the school with us. Their family has a servant heart and it was such a joy to see them build relationships with the kids in only a few hours. By the end of the day they were holding their hands and dragging them across the field to play with them. Their willingness to serve the Lord faithfully has been a huge encouragement to us while they have been here. Sometimes the days at the school feel long and can be very frustrating. It was so refreshing to have so many joyful spirits around!

Tuesday and Thursday we continued doing VBS at the Dump.  We were able to make changes that improved the flow of things. Story time was now with the whole group at once so we could have the remaining people to encourage the children to pay attention. Tuesday was about Jesus' baptism and temptation. Thursday was about Jesus' death and resurrection.  Our vision for the teachings of VBS were to clearly explain Redemptive History to these children.  Overall, the story time went well, even though there were some unruly children who just couldn't sit still and pay attention.  The group who did the craft got the opportunity to expand on the teaching, which was really awesome!  Games were focussed on team building and being able to work together. The children seemed to really enjoy the different groups as a whole, so hopefully this week has paved the way to do similar types of ministry at the Dump.

We have loved having the Strawderman's here with us for a week! We are so thankful for their desire to serve the Lord faithfully through missions. It was such a joy to work alongside them and see how the Lord used them while they were here. Please be in prayer for their awesome family as they travel back to the States in the morning!

Photo credits: Elizabeth, Ceci, and Kim
Written by: Hannah and Ceci