This last week we officially closed out our 2018-2019 school year with our graduation ceremony. I was asked to share a few words about the journey I had gone on over the past 10 months. I had already wanted to write a blog about this very thing to share with you so I felt like it was fitting to just give you guys the speech that I gave at graduation! A little over a year ago God gave me a vision of myself. It looked like a movie. I could see a 9 year old version of myself walking on a dirt road at sunset. I was holding someone's hand but I couldn't see who it was. Suddenly, I realized that the person was Jesus. I then saw my face: 9 year old me was laughing and experiencing pure joy. I was delighting in simply being with Jesus, delighting in his presence with me on the road. This vision came during a time when my walk with Christ had grown stale, I was desperate to see Jesus like I had when I was a child: with wide-eyed wonder! 10 months ago, the students and staff of Emmaus embarked on a journey. God called us all to journey together to a city called Emmaus, a road that the resurrected Jesus walked on with two of his disciples. As they were walking he showed them how the whole story of Scripture pointed to himself. As they reflected on their time on the road they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened up the scriptures to us?”One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to continue to walk on this Emmaus Road every year with our students. I get to journey alongside them as they see each book of the Bible come alive. I was asked by Caleb to quickly share a little bit of what my Emmaus Journey has looked like for the past 10 months. This turned out to be a really difficult task. The last 10 months of my life have seen so much movement and change. Many times it felt like I was sprinting, not walking, on this Emmaus road. In the last 10 months I taught 10 books of the Bible for the school, and I moved off campus into my first apartment. Most importantly, on January 19th, I got married to the love of my life. As I have reflected about the last year I feel like God has done two things in my life. Specifically, he has shown me his love for me in two major ways. I would like to share those with you.

First thing:

God has shown me his love for me through the books that I taught. Each book this year has been God wanting to gain more real estate in my heart. It was never me imparting knowledge to the students. It was always God speaking to a direct timely need.[gallery ids="329,330" type="rectangular"]Jonah taught me that I am like Jonah: bitter and resentful to people that I think don’t deserve my love; people who I believe are my enemy. God is patient with me, sits with me and challenges me to love unconditionally like how he loves his enemies. Deuteronomy showed me the choice that we all have between life and death. The one I have so commonly chosen wrong. So many times what I think will bring me life is really death with a disguise. No matter how many times I chose death God was offering me true life. Ezekiel: God is in the midst of my suffering, pain and loneliness. He enters into my Babylon. In fact he enters into our darkest times and is present with us. This came at a time when my father was in bad health and I had to go home.Zechariah showed me how to walk out life when our expectations don't meet reality. Corinthians taught me to make Love my aim. Peter taught me to be gentle and kind. So often I wrongly envision myself as leading the students down the Emmaus road - like I’m playing the part of Jesus. But in actuality, it’s that I’m still on this Emmaus journey. I’m 9 years old, delighting in Jesus and every now and again I look back and see these guys walking behind me. The first way God loved me is by giving me these books to teach.

The second way I have seen God love me is through Lauren.

[gallery ids="325,328" type="rectangular"]I knew marriage was going to be fun and awesome. But man, I didn't know that it was going to be this good! There has not been one single other person who has taught me more about the love of Jesus than Lauren. Not because of lack of godly mentors, that's just how awesome Lauren is. When I feel dirty, gross, and unlovable she has been the one to speak love to me. Too many times she has picked me off of the floor and said, “try again”. She has spoken truth to me when I have needed it. She has challenged me to look more like Jesus every day. She Demands my love for her, she pulls my heart back to her and reminds me, “hey, we are in this forever.”. She has seen the ugliest sides of me and said, “I think I can love that.”. She only learned that from Jesus. When I spend time with her and have her love on me, it’s God’s love for me through her. Lauren you are teaching me more about the Gospel than I could ever learn from just studying it in a book. God sent you to be my best friend, because he knew I needed you. Thank you. In many ways I am still on this Emmaus road, and I’m thankful that it will never stop. I’m also so thankful to have these travel companions for this leg of the journey. Class of 2019, your time here at Emmaus is coming to a close, but your journey on the road to Emmaus is just beginning.

Prayer Requests

The Summer ahead- I will soon share with you what we are doing this summer. Please pray for productivity for the staff and travel mercies as we all journey around. Future Students- We are currently accepting student applications. Pray for those who are getting ready to do the school and for those who are still yet to apply. Pray that God would draw in future students to our program. Support- I am hoping to use this summer to get ahead in support raising. I really need to double my monthly support base. Please pray for divine appointments and people who are excited about the mission.

Hello Partners in the living Word of God. It has been a little while since I have been able to spend any time updating yall about life here at Emmaus. I wanted to just take some time sharing with y'all what is happening here at the school, what I am doing here at Emmaus and what is going on with our wedding planning. As I write this Lauren and I have less than 100 days until we tie the knot! We are so excited to kick off our life together! Currently, we have sent out all of our invites and are now working through everything for the reception. It feels weird to be this close to the wedding, yet it still feels far away. Lauren and I do recognize that October, November, and December are all going to fly by and before we know it, we will be married! We recently got back from Northern Georgia where we had the pleasure of shooting our engagement photos! Our Photographers are a young couple our age and we had an awesome road trip to the mountains to make these photos happen. Here is a little sneak peek of what is to come: [gallery ids="269,270,271,272,273,274" type="rectangular"]

(Our Photos were taken by Old Pine Pictorial)

So much has been happening here at Emmaus that I am excited to tell you about. On September 8th, Jacob and Samantha McRae (staff) welcomed little Benaiah McRae into the world and we welcomed him into the Emmaus family! We are so excited for the McRaes! We have been able to spend some time with Benaiah and it has been a joy. Sam and Jacob are both doing well! They are currently trying to get used to life with a baby. Since Jacob and Sam are on leave, their responsibilities have been split between the remaining staff. Over the past month, I have picked up a few more responsibilities with things on campus and with making the day to day operations run. The main new thing is that I have currently been cooking/ordering breakfast for our students. A big part of this work is doing what is ultimately unseen by students. I feel like God has been growing in me an appreciation for the work in ministry that goes unpraised. Very rarely would I ever sign up for a task that wouldn't result in me getting some sort of praise. In this season I feel like my heart has been pushed and challenged. God has said to my heart, “I have more for you than what you want, isn't it enough that I see you and am pleased?”. This time has really forced me to be more forward-thinking, more organized and more humble than ever before. I really am grateful for it and I still have tons of room to grow! In September I had the pleasure of teaching Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy might be my favorite book of the Law and it was a blast to prepare and teach. I found myself, more than ever, vulnerable while teaching Deuteronomy. I believe that God has called me to be open and vulnerable when I teach, to share my own faults and weaknesses with our students. I didn't realize until I was teaching Deuteronomy, but it was really hard this time to be open and share my own brokenness with the students. Deuteronomy has a great message. The Israelites are about to enter over into the promised land and they are given a choice: Follow God in faithfulness or rebel and do what they think is right. Moses phrases it like this. “Today I set before you a choice, life or death. Choose life”. It has really hit me during prep and teaching what it looks like to have true life: following Jesus with everything I've got. Death looks like doing what I think will bring me life. Too often in my own life, I have chosen death when it disguises itself as life. Jesus would say it this way in the Gospel of Mark (8:35), “For whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life or my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” Deuteronomy was the hardest book for me to teach, but it was one of the most rewarding at the same time. More recently I was able to teach the prophet Joel. This seemingly insignificant book is absolutely packed with amazing truth about God’s character, the day of the Lord and the hope that we know we have in our Savior. I was able to teach about how God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and willing to relent of disaster. Joel has been one of the more challenging books to teach and yet one of the most rewarding. If you would like the audio lectures for either Deuteronomy or Joel, feel free to message me and I will send it to you![gallery ids="275,278,276,277" type="rectangular"] 

What is coming up:

During this month we have several Biblical Narrative Series! All of them will be on the prophets and we are so excited to share these with the local church. Caleb Ives has been teaching and totally killing each one! Lauren and I are moving right along with wedding planning and getting ready for starting life together! We can't wait to be married. I will be teaching Ezekiel (November) and Zechariah (December). I am really excited for both, but I don't feel like I have enough time to sufficiently study and know Ezekiel. Pray that I will be diligent in my study!  

Prayer Request:

As always, pray that our students would find life in their study and their work, that it wouldn't just be turning in homework. Support- I'm still attempting to be fully funded by the wedding. We have had a few more partners join us! Slowly but surely God is closing the gap. Please pray for more meetings and for divine appointments! Praise- Lauren and I just got accepted for an apartment! We are really excited about moving in and starting our family together. I will be moving in at the end of November. I’m going to get the apartment ready (paint, furniture etc). Then Lauren is going to move in after the wedding! We are so excited and so blessed to have our living situation figured out!!

It’s finally here! This last week we kicked off our first full year with our revamped School of Biblical Studies. We have been waiting and praying for this day for months and it’s crazy to think that it’s finally here. As always, I want to give you an inside look at what is going on here at the school, give you a picture of what is to come, and then a quick prayer request. This fall we have welcomed 6 new students into the school and 4 students from the spring semester are continuing their journey. We are always excited to help students begin their Emmaus journey, this year we have been blessed to have the nations come to us. When we changed the school to be part-time, we thought that was the end of seeing students come from all over the world and United States but were surprisingly and thankfully wrong!! This year we have a couple from the Netherlands and a student from Germany and Pennsylvania. This has filled our classroom with a diversity of backgrounds and cultures, this helps all of us to learn more about God, life in community and ourselves.Within our student body, 6 students are living on campus here at Canterbury. One thing that we strive for at Emmaus is to establish genuine relationships and community life. So when we welcome new students I am always a little nervous. Will the students like living on campus? will they enjoy each other? how can we facilitate good community? A lot of my worries about our on-campus community were answered before the school even started. Several of our students showed up a few days early, before classes or our scheduled community times. However, our new students instantly started to cook food together and have game nights. The community on campus has already been a wonderful surprise. The students have started to grow closer together. Below you can see a picture of us sharing some Dutch pancakes for dinner. Afterword we played ping pong. I can already tell that this season is going to be very life-giving. [gallery ids="253,252" type="rectangular"] We have started to walk the students through the way that they are going to study Scripture this year through the Inductive Bible Study Method. I had the pleasure of teaching 4 times in the first week. On the first day, we talked about what inductive Bible study is, digging into what it looks like to lay aside our preconceived notions and let the text speak for itself. On our second and third days, we talked about methods of Observation. I was able to teach the students how to see and study the structure of each book and how to create and utilize their own color code. Thursday I walked the students through Interpretation, which is considering what the book would have meant to the original readers or hearers. On this day I had two lectures, one where I introduced the idea of what good interpretation looks like. Each year when we teach the students the Inductive method, we have them “practice” on a book of the Bible. This year we chose the book of Jonah to help them learn the method. Thursday morning I had the pleasure of walking them through the relevant historical background of Jonah. The difficult part of teaching this for many Old Testament books is that we aren't sure for a lot of it. This is part of why we wanted to start with Jonah. Right off the bat, our students have to wrestle with difficult questions like who wrote Jonah, when was it written, is it history or allegory? [gallery ids="263,261,258" type="rectangular"]This semester we are so excited to see these students journey through the Old Testament. I know that when I began my Emmaus journey through the Old Testament it was exciting, scary and awesome all at the same time. Please pray that God will work through us and help us to encourage these students as they begin their journey here at Emmaus. Lastly, we have started up our Biblical Narrative Series. This is our Monday night class open to the public. Our narrative series is designed to run in tandem with our school. At each lecture, we spend some time talking about the relevant historical information that all the books share and we give tips on how to study every book within that unit of Scripture. This last week we started out in the Pentateuch! One of our teaching staff, Sarah Wise, did an amazing job in leading this first session of the fall! Our next narrative series will be September 17th covering Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuels, and Kings! If you are local please join us!  

Prayer Requests:

This season is admittedly the busiest I have ever been. I am teaching full time for Emmaus, leading the new high school ministry at my church, speaking once a month at the assisted living home, and planning a wedding. I feel tired already, and have a long way to go. The wedding is closing in!!! With marriage just around the corner, I feel the pressure to get fully funded. Pray that God will help me find divine appointments and stir in the hearts of future partners to give. I am so thankful for your continual prayer and support! Thank you for partnering with me in the Gospel here at Emmaus! 

Hello Partners in Jesus Christ. I wanted to take my monthly update blog to share the story about how God brought Lauren and I together. Lauren and I have loved to talk about how we have seen God work collectively and individually to bring us together.The story is even better when you hear both sides. One thing you will notice, as one of our friends, Sarah, pointed out, our story isn’t normal. As Lauren talks about it, it’s not overly thrilling or even glamorous but it’s the one that God orchestrated. God in his infinite wisdom and goodness moved in our hearts in just the way that each of us needed.

Stephen’s Story:

I had been living in Orlando for ten months and was really involved with my church's young adult Bible study. On one of our monthly game nights I was introduced to Lauren. She was the roommate of a mutual friend. That night Lauren and I sat next to each other and talked. I went home not thinking too much about our interactions. Not long after that night I graduated from ESBS and traveled back home to Michigan to support raise and speak at summer camps. In August I returned to Orlando and started working full time with Emmaus Ministries. After getting back to Orlando I continued attending the young adult group. At the group Lauren and I started to talk more and more. Not long after, a mutual friend called me to tell me that Lauren had a crush on me. I knew that I had some feelings for her, but I was still pretty unsure about dating her. After thinking and praying about it for a little bit I decided to go for it. After each date I felt my heart pulling closer and closer to her. I really feel like I saw the heart of God in Lauren as she pursued me. It wasn't long after we started to date that I knew I wanted to marry her. So I recruited some of our best friends to help me pop the question to Lauren while at St. Simon’s Island. Lauren has done a great job telling the story of the proposal below. I knew it had to be magical yet simple. Lauren told me I could propose to her in anyway as long as I didn't use a flash mob. I knew that I wanted to use her favorite song Clair de Lune and I wanted to tell Lauren how much I care for her. So I recruited some of the greatest love quotes of all time to help me tell the story of how I loved her. Now here we are, engaged and getting ready to be married. I can honestly say that I keep falling more and more in love with Lauren as each day passes. I can’t wait to be married to her and can’t wait to have y’all help us celebrate. [gallery ids="240,243,244,245" type="rectangular"] 

Lauren Story:

On the drive home from the game night where I met Stephen my roommate said to me, "What do you think about Stephen?"  When we met, I really didn't think too much of it. But, it's because of that conversation that I gave Stephen a second thought.Over the summer while Stephen was away I really felt like the Lord was impressing on my heart to pursue a relationship with this boy that I had met only once. I felt a deep and profound certainty that Stephen was going to be my person. It honestly freaked me out at first. When I sought counsel I prefaced it with "I know that this sounds crazy, but I think I'm supposed to marry Stephen." When Stephen returned after summer, we started spending more time together, then we began going on dates. On November 10 we made things official. And boy am I ever glad that we did.I don't think I've ever seen anyone as nervous as Stephen the day he proposed. We had gone to St. Simon's Island for a weekend trip with some friends for my birthday and Stephen had roped them into helping set up the beach site where Stephen proposed. Stephen used my favorite song, Clair de Lune, and had mixed movie quotes about love over it. He had that playing as we walked to where he would propose.  There, in the sand, was a journal that Stephen had written in. It ended with, "I just have one question..." and when I looked up Stephen got down on one knee. Words can't even come close to capturing the depth of my love for Stephen. He is my best friend and such a perfect match for me. He loves me more deeply than I ever knew was possible. He is gentle and kind and he pushes me to become more like Christ everyday. He's also a giant goofball and that makes life with him so much fun! I am so grateful that God chose Stephen to be my companion through life and I can't wait to celebrate with everyone in January!!! [gallery ids="239,238,232,233,234,236" type="rectangular"]Thank you for taking time to read about our story. We are so excited to get married in January and are so blessed to have friends, family and partners in ministry cheering us on as we step into this new phase of life. I can't wait to share with you more as the wedding day approaches and school starts up in a month. As we move forward, our hope is to continue to make connections with people who are excited about what God is doing here at Emmaus through our new family.

Prayer Requests:

Fundraising. I’m still looking for more monthly financial partners. I’m hoping to be fully funded for my own needs by September. Then I'm hoping to continue fundraising so that I can support both Lauren and I by the wedding in January. Please pray for the Lord to set up divine appointments and to move in the hearts of people excited about this ministry! The School: We are starting in under a months time! Please pray for use as we prepare the physical spaces and prepare our lectures. Please also pray for the incoming new and returning students. Pray that God would use this time to really mold and shape them into who he is calling them to be.

Next Update:

We will be starting the school on the week of august 13. That whole week will be all morning classes introducing students to the way that they are going to study the bible for the year. Keep an eye out for a start of the semester update sometime in mid August.