Start of the New School Year!

The summer has come and gone, and we are now in the first phase of what I call "catching the oncoming freight train" that is the beginning of the new school year. It is by far the busiest time of the year, as we seek to reconnect with returning students, establish contact with new students, and get all our programs up and running. As a friend of mine (former director at Syracuse, Nick DeCola) once said, it's like we start up a new church from scratch every year.

We return with great hopes and dreams. As of the end of last year, we had 200+ students involved in four key ministries:

- UConn Students for Christ (our traditional Campus Crusade ministry)
- reGeneration (our multicultural ministry)
- Athletes in Action (dedicated to the unique needs of student-athletes)
- Student Venture (for kids at Mansfield Middle School)

We also are involved with helping other campuses in the state (Quinnipiac, notably), and we are the lead campus for the partnership in Milan, Italy. To these efforts, we are looking to reach out more in four ethnic communities: the African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Indian, and international populations. Moreover, one of my primary assignments will be to raise up a STINT (short term international) team for Milan for 2010-11. That will not be an easy task, to find four qualified and eager staff who will choose to live in Milan for a year, working on several university campuses.

So we have a lot going on. Please pray for us as the school year begins!

Welcome to the blog!

I know that for many of us, the internet has provided a way to gather more information more quickly. Instead of going to the newsstand and buying the daily paper, we can now sit at home in our slippers and read the major stories in dozens of international newspapers at our desk. Yet this amazing age of technology also can drown us, as we have gadget upon gadget occupying our time.

Well, I fully recognize these realities but I wanted to provide you with a way to stay fully current with what's going on through the ministry at UConn. A monthly prayer letter is a great way to stay up to date, but my plan is to update the blog once a week. If I promise to do it more than that, I'll fall too far behind, but if it's less regular than that, I may as well just stick to the monthly prayer letters! So consider this my attempt at allowing you an inside window into the ministry in as close to "real time" as pragmatism allows.

For this first entry, I'll just share one quick story. Over the break we had our annual Boston Winter Conference, and the Sunday of the conference was a day of outreach in the city. I ended up going with two other students from UConn to Roxbury, near Northeastern University, and we witnessed to folks in the projects. One woman let us into her apartment and the two students got to sharing with her. Her boyfriend was there as well, and he seemed pretty interested, so I took him aside and had a separate conversation with him. It took us well over an hour, and by that time, the other students had finished their conversation and had left the apartment, leaving me alone with the couple!!

To make an hour-long story short, he was so moved by God that he gave his life to Christ right there. It was incredible to watch God work through the students as they stepped out in faith, and to watch God open a door for ministry and to witness a life changed before our very eyes.

These are the kinds of things we get to experience as God moves in our midst. What a privilege to be a part!!!

JV