Back in February, I posted about how I was getting back into the game of working directly with students. Well, it's 2 months later and it's time for an update from beautiful Bellevue University!
Just a few days after I posted, I met with the student from Bellevue that Coach Ice put me in contact with. From my brief conversation with her, I learned a few things:
- She loved Jesus
- She wanted her friends on the women's basketball team to love Jesus
- She had wanted to start a bible study with her team for a while
- She would be leaving school to head back home in about a month
Yowza, talk about a punch in the gut! Still, we had a great conversation and she said that there might be a few other ladies on the team that would be interested in starting something, even if she wasn't there. We agreed it would be best to wait until the season was over to reevaluate.
Fast forward a few weeks and the season is over (Bellevue lost in the championship game!) so I reach out to the student and she gives me the names of 3 ladies from her team. I set up a lunch with them and invited my friend and co-worker Eric to join me, since he would probably be the one who had more time and capacity to actually start a group at Bellevue. My hope was to get to know the ladies but pass off the leadership to Eric.
Man, that was a fun lunch.
We met at a Mexican restaurant close to campus. Over chips and salsa (the best Mexican restaurants have free chips and salsa, y'know?) the women shared about how the season went, a little bit about their faith stories, and how they felt like the basketball team was a group that spent a lot of time together but wasn't necessarily real and vulnerable with one another. That was definitely something that they wanted. You could tell there was definite momentum.
Here's the funny part. I actually had to leave because I had to get to another meeting. Thankfully, Eric was there and he hung out with them more. (Don't worry, I still picked up the check; I'm not a monster!). I don't know how long they sat there talking but I got a text from Eric afterwards saying that they prayed for one of the women who had recently become a Christian and that there were definitely tears. The women all promised to take the next week to pray about whether or not they wanted to start a bible study on their team but we're pretty sure the answer will be yes.
My favorite part of the story is the following Sunday. I was on parking duty at church (little known fact: parking duty is one of my spiritual gifts) at Coach Ice rolled into the parking lot. I said, "Hey, Coach!" and he replied, "I don't know what you did to those ladies, but they wouldn't stop talking about that lunch! I was trying to watch basketball and they kept interrupting me!" =0).
If you have a moment, would you please pray for the new work being done at Bellevue? Pray for Meleah, Shelby, and Jillian as they lead this group. Pray for Eric and me as we empower them best we can. Pray for Bellevue University, that this will be the start of something big. #GoBruins
Have an excellent day!
~Adam 
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