IGNITE!

In a few words: exhilarating, prayerful, stressful, awesome, amazing & worthwhile!

Last weekend I directed my 1st ever completely-on-my-own regional black student conference: IGNITE!  Due to my recent maternity leave, the whole thing from top to bottom was planned by me and a co-worker, Shaylen J. in a little under 7 weeks!  It was on the smaller side as conferences go -55 total including staff and volunteers- but no less important.  I’m prayerfully trying to build momentum for black student work in our region and felt we needed to start anew with a visionary call to purposefully reaching black students on our campuses.  Students came from WSU, WMU, YSU, & a bunch of other places across MI, OH, W. VA & Western PA.

In hindsight perhaps I shouldn’t have made myself the keynote speaker in addition to all my responsibilities as the program director.  oops, consider this my ‘note to self’.

Anyway, I spoke on Gideon and one of my main points is that you can’t rely on numbers to determine success.  Gideon was ready to take 32,000 men into battle against app. half a million when God told him to cut back on his army — to 300!  I challenged the students that if Israel defeated the Midianites with 300 men then they need not be afraid of being one of very few missional Christians on their campus.

It was fantastically fun.  I brought in several alum from the chapter at WMU I used to staff.  We spent a good chunk of the way home debriefing the conference laughing our heads off about all that went right and wrong.  It was so great to reconnect with students that I spent the better part of 4 years developing.  They did such a great job!  Consider this my sugar shout out to the Washingtons, Wingards & the rest of the CBC crew.  I love yall to pieces!

One of the best things that happened in my planning process was a dramatic increase in my prayer life.  In the last 3 weeks it just became so obvious that I did not have enough time to do everything that needed to be done.  Maybe if I could have given it a good 40 hours a week effort but that’s not my reality anymore.  I had to keep praying God would help me to resist the temptation to work during my time with the kids.  When it came down to it, the temptation to work more than my allotted 20 hours a week was nothing more than glory seeking.  It was my desire for the conference to be something so spectacular that everyone would say ‘wow look at what a great conference planner Grace is!’  Once I gave that to God I had the freedom to only do what I could do within my work hours and depend on God for the rest.

And what do you know?  My little plan worked.  Well, God worked.  All of the things I was stressed about, or couldn’t finish I prayerfully lifted up to the Lord daily, hourly even.  Once the conference rolled around I was fairly even keel, calm, surprisingly collected and and not easily frustrated about little things going wrong.

I actually didn’t get thrown off guard until the very end of the conference when one of the students had a medical condition which required emergency care.  Okay fine so I was freaking out.  Mostly because, in addition to the issue at hand the only InterVarsity staff present had all forgot our “risk management cards,” which details how to handle our IV insurance and which legal departments to call.  I only started sweating when I called my supervisor no less than 8 times and he had yet to call me back.

Okay, yes it was a Sat. night but after the “911 911 911” text I thought for sure he’d call me back! 🙂  Turns out, in a shocking twist of fate, he hadn’t even looked at his phone for a few hours.

Overall, I left the conference praising and thanking God for what he did in students lives!  Unfortunately, due to legal issues I can’t actually share any of that nor any pictures of the conference in my blog.  Occupational hazard, eh? 🙂  If you’d like to know more drop me an email & I’ll get you on our email list where I frequently share ministry updates.

It felt so completely awesome to be back in the game after a year in seminary, two months doing only fund-raising, 3 months on maternity leave taking care of my little Rhys and then 6-7 weeks of intense planning.  I AM BACK! 🙂

In fact, I’m so back, I’m all ready -T -I -R-E-D.  I’ve been trying to cut back on caffeine since the conference and I feel like a zombie.

I’m also so back, I’m about to leave again.  Next week, Rhys & I are flying out to Atlanta for IV’s national black staff conference -by far the BEST & FUNNEST conference of the year.  The next week after that Dave & I are headed to Mexico for our 10 year anniversary vacation, and the week after that Rhys & I are headed to Wisconsin for IV leadership meetings. whew.

Wouldn’t change any of it for the world though.  I love living my calling.

peace,