Oil and Water...and Food Coloring

Last week our focus was on money and the poor. To help students recognize the challenging nature of Jesus' teaching on money--the way it's most likely to just "sit" on our hearts for awhile only to be skimmed off by our materialistic, consumeristic culture--we gave students a visual. "Instead of the teaching resting on us like oil on water, may you permanently transform us," our worship leader, Erna, prayed as she dropped food coloring into a vase of water. We ended the night hearing from Tom Hsieh, one of the founding members of Earthlink, and how his early patterns of giving and generosity prepared him to handle the two million dollars he found himself owning after Earthlink's initial public offering.

Interestingly enough, this week has brought more conflict over team money and how it's spent than any so far. Students are grappling with what it looks like to steward their resources responsibly and creatively, and are going deeper in conversation as they work out those challenges.

On another note, God's Spirit continues to be powerfully at work. Laurie is severely lactose intolerant, but found herself at a crossroads when a Spanish-speaking man offered her a taco covered with goat cheese after church. Sensing the importance of the gesture, Laurie took and ate the taco, only to find that she was physically unaffected, possibly being healed from her condition.

Leah shared about her teammate's prayer for God's Spirit to protect their house, and the way that--for the first time--she physically felt the presence of the Spirit of God in a way she had only heard about.

Students are deep in the trenches of loving children and families at this point in LAUP...which means that the character lessons are abundant, and the challenge of sacrificial love and compassion are becoming more real. Please pray with me for the LAUP interns, that these next couple weeks would open them up to a joy, power, and vision for walking with God that would transform the rest of their lives.

Lastly, there are three more Thursdays for you to visit us, and we'd love to have you. And if you are a LAUP alumni, you're invited to our alumni night on our last Thursday, July 28th. Feel free to email me at Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org for more details. I leave you wiht a short video that captures some of what our weekly worship times involve. Enjoy!