Spring Break: OC '72 PART 1

This spring break trip has probably been one of the most impacting experiences of my life. I don't even know if I can fully express the magnitude of what happened in the last week. It really has been life changing and inspiring. I don't even know where to begin. A group of 95 students from Campus Crusade for Christ went to Orange County California from March 8-13. It was a last minute trip after our plans to go to Rocky Point and Los Angeles were disrupted. It was clear that God really wanted us to go to Orange County this year.

We left early Sunday morning around 10 am. I was so exhausted because the night before I was inspired to pray and blog long into the night....the whole night actually. After my Group Investigating God with my new Chinese friends. I talked to my brother and Sara for a little bit, and I ended up blogging until about 5 in the morning. I also had to do some hw for one of my online classes so I ended up staying up all night before I was picked up at 8 am. So I was exhausted on the trip up to Orange County.

Once we got there, we checked into this really nice hotel and got ready for our main session. It was almost overwhelming to see so many people on this trip. It's crazy to think that at our spring break trip last year we only had 95 people. This year, we almost doubled. It definitely is not about the numbers, but it is just evidence of the crazy things God has been doing in Campus Crusade for Christ at ASU this past year. The trip is called OC '72 because one first off we were going to Orange County. Secondly, the 72 is taken from Luke 10 where Jesus sends out the 72 to go to cities all over Israel to bring the gospel and move in the power of the Holy Spirit. Luke 10 is one of my most favorite chapters in the Bible because in this chapter God lays out a very clear model of evangelism and church planting. So it was so amazing to go with a group of college students from ASU and do evangelism and loving on people Luke 10 style.

So what did we do there? We did lots of crazy things! The first night we were there all the staff and seniors dressed up in different costumes and we all went to Downtown Disney to try to find them in their disguises. Our large group was separated into 10 families of about 8 to 10 people. It was a lot of fun to hang out with our family and look around Downtown Disney.

The next days were when the real work began. Each morning we traveled from our hotel (where we had free breakfast buffet....sooo good!) to a mega church called Mariners that let us borrow their facilities. This church was so nice! It was ridiculous how fancy and resourced it was. It had its own bookstore and coffee shop, it had a lots of fountains and an outdoor baptismal, it had playgrounds and cool stuff for kids, and their student center where we stayed had basketball courts, video games, pool, ping pong, and all this other crazy stuff. So we were pretty spoiled to stay there.

Anyway, each morning we go to the hotel had devotional time with Jenny D, quiet time, than evangelism training. I got to help lead Evangelism training each morning with Alex Logue for students who were going on a spring break trip for the first time. I had a lot of fun leading this evangelism training. It was challenging teaching a group of maybe 20 to 25 students for the first time. But I had so much fun teaching about the basics of evangelism. It has been something that I have been very passionate about especially in the past two weeks. So I was able to talk about many things that were really close to my heart.

After evangelism training, we gathered together again with our families to draw from the mystery boxes. The mystery boxes were three boxes with the themes of compassion, sharing, and adventure with Jesus. There were different envelopes in the boxes with different things to go do around Orange County. The idea was that our families would all be given different tasks to go and impact Orange County. Some of the things included helping out with Orange County Rescue Mission, feeding the homeless, prayer walking around the city, sharing at the beach, riding the bus system and sharing, or going to UC-Irvine and sharing there. It was a just a bunch of different things that we could do to touch the Orange County with the love of Christ. I didn't know what to expect, but God truly blew all my expectations out of the water this past week. Like I said this past week has really changed my life and opened up eyes to see a greater picture of God's heart for evangelism and for loving other people.

It was good stuff!!! Stay Tuned....