Maryville Madness!

Hello, friends! 

I have a fun story to tell you about Maryville University, one of the campuses where I am working with Wesley, one of our volunteer staff. 

At the beginning of the year, the plan was that Wesley, Robert, and I would all do some work at FloValley, scouting and potentially planting a ministry there.  What we quickly learned was that given Wesley's work schedule (your typical 9-5) coupled with FloValley's student traffic schedule (everything happening between 11-2), it didn't make much sense for him to be there.  The question was, where would he go?  Well, it worked out very well that he lives very close to Maryville University, so we decided to try and scout things a little there. 

Honestly, it was a really slow and discouraging semester at Maryville for Wesley and for me as his trainer.  It seemed like nothing we tried worked and gaining momentum was like pulling teeth.  We ended the semester with 1 potentially core student and lots of dead ends. 

Then, Urbana happened.  I told you about how I had plenty to do at Urbana and how one of my jobs was working the bookstore as a bagger.  The Urbana bookstore needed phone numbers to accompany all credit card purchases, so I made it a point to ask folk where they lived if I saw an area code that I recognized.  I met one gal who lived about a block from my parents place, which was pretty cool, but the best happened when I saw a 636 number and let the man know that I was staff in Saint Louis, including staff at Maryville. 

Well, friends, it just so happens that this man's daughter is a Freshman at Maryville!  Even better, she is totally a missional Christian and her parents are InterVarsity alumni!  She's been a part of another Christian orginazation while at Maryville but only because there wasn't an InterVarsity group. 

I got the gal's contact information and sent it along to Wesley.  It turns out that he had already tried to contact her but hadn't gotten a response because the phone number he had was off by one digit and he texted her MOM instead of her.  =0). 

Anyway, Wes and the gal met earlier this week and are going to be trying to start a bible study on her dorm floor starting next Monday.  Here's hoping that this is the beginning of something beautiful! 

Prayer Points:
- Please, please, PLEASE be praying for Wesley's bible study on Monday.  Pray that this will be beginning of something great on that campus. 
- The Missouri Area will be having an area-wide evangelism training at Mizzou on Sunday (more on that later).  Please pray that God will move in the students and on the campus.

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam