This week was a good week! We had a speaker who knew a lot about C.S. Lewis. Luckily we are reading Mere Christianity right now so we got him to come to my group’s book discussion and he talked about the whole book. There were some things that he didn’t agree with C.S. Lewis. For example, C.S. Lewis says, “A Christian can lose the Christ-life which has been put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep it.” But then, in scripture, a classmate pointed out Philippians 1: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.” I think that book discussion was one of my favorites.
Then, later that night, we had a Christmas party and made gingerbread houses with our pause family. Unfortunately, my family didn’t win, but probably because we were laughing and messing around the whole time. But my favorite part was having to act out a scene from The Polar Express. We did such a terrible job, but also because we were laughing so hard the whole time.
In conclusion, I learned a lot and laughed a lot this week and I think it was one of my favorite weeks.
-Samantha Beale (Current Student)
A week of laughter, tears, movie remakes, gingerbread houses, and learning. “If you waited until you weren’t awkward, you’d never do anything.” -Jerry Root.
Our speaker this week, Jerry, taught us about Evangelism. Our first evening with him, Jerry shared just the basics of evangelism the first evening and why we might have fears of sharing with others. Some conclusions he led us to were the fear of man and rejection, sometimes we have too much comfort staying in our bubble that we don’t ever branch out. if we know God truly loves us why don’t we share that gift?
The following nights he shared how to evangelize within the context of them and their relevance to you. How to share with people in your everyday life. The next evening he continued to share and tell us how to practice and continue being engaged with one another and how to love others whom we’ve evangelized. How we often have a deep feeling of loneliness even though we’re in a room full of people. How the longing we have for a home and the loneliness we face shows how much we need God. How we were created by him to have a relationship with him.The final morning we had with Jerry he taught us the importance of follow up and how to followup with others and what bible versus to read with them as we are going to ask them about follow-ups.
Overall, this week was so fruitful as we continued to learn about how to Evangelize. Also, this week we had our Pause-Family Christmas party! We got to partake in fun activities such as making a gingerbread House and Re-enacting all time family favorites of Christmas movies such as Elf, A Christmas Carol, Polar Express, Home Alone, and a few more. Our Gingerbread house was labeled “Most overtly religious but biblically inaccurate” (we created a beautiful manger), and it was hilarious. We head into the weekend to participate in work activities, and then next week, we’ll start Philippians 2 testing!! Thank you to all who read the blog and pray over us. Merry Christmas, Until Next time! 🙂
– Emalee Reynoso (Current Student)