Whenever that phrase is attached to anything, you know something important is about to follow.

Up until that time, we had been happily planning to spend this summer in Colorado, taking seminary classes and attending our National Staff conference. But that one e-mail changed everything.

After conversing at length with our national leadership, we have been assigned to direct the Lake Tahoe Summer Project. It’s a huge responsibility and a great challenge. It was a surprising development because project directors are always put in place well before Christmas, giving them time to recruit staff and plan the summer before the student applications start coming in.

Unfortunately there are no such luxuries for us. Our plate is full and we are furiously trying to catch up while juggling all of our other responsibilities. The end result is a series of “mountain” and “valley” experiences that we have endured over the past few months.

The following is a preview:

We passed out 4200 copies of our “Real Life News” newspaper on campus. Over 150 students attended a talk that week entitled “The Ultimate Sexual Experience”. 15 students indicated on their comment card that they had prayed to receive Christ into their life. Jen is following up on one of those students, a freshman named Courtney. Courtney came to the event because her suitemate Nina invited her. (See Nina’s story below)

Our staff couple, Jason & Monica gave birth to their first child, Tyler, on Feb. 21st. Their son has Down Syndrome and will probably need open heart surgery within the next 5 weeks. Please pray for them.

We have over 25 students accepted and planning to attend summer missions projects this summer. It wasn’t too long ago that we only had 25 people in our entire group.

Jennifer and I are still in the waiting process with our adoption. We have been waiting for over a year now. We are praying that by sometime this summer we would receive a call to meet with a birth mother. Please continue to pray with us and for us.

Doug is a freshman who showed up at my Bible study a few weeks ago. I met with Doug a few days later to get to know him and to tell him a little bit about Campus Crusade.

After sharing the gospel with him, Doug realized that he had never fully accepted Christ. He made that decision and now we are meeting for follow-up.

Nina is a freshman who we’ve asked you to pray for. Just this past week, Jen was meeting with Nina again, to help her get closer to making a decision for Christ. After going through some Bible study material, Nina realized for the first time that she was a Christian. However, she had never experienced the assurance that she actually was saved and accepted by God. Because she did not have this assurance, she was hesitant to call herself a Christian, for fear of being a hypocrite.

In April, we will be hosting our first annual Fellowship Dinner. It’s an event designed to highlight our ministry to the community and give people an opportunity to partner with us as we seek to reach out to students on campus in a culturally relevant way.

We are excited about this event but at the same time we are nervous about how it will turn out. We have invested an incredible amount of time and resources into the planning of this event. Many of you who live within a few hours will be receiving invitations to come.

Please pray for this event: both the preparation and the results.

Needless to say that with the Tahoe project, the Fellowship Dinner, and our regular ministry on campus, our schedule is full. We are excited though about the impact that God is having on our campus and for the opportunity to impact 80 students from all over the country. Thank you for your partnership in influencing students!