"Harvesting" Memories

I cannot believe that November is over and Christmas is right around the corner! This is always a bittersweet time on campus because we are anxious to spend a little time with our families for the holidays, but it is sad to think that another semester is coming to a close and students are graduating (If I can barely handle our students graduating and leaving, I feel sorry for our future children). But before I get ahead of myself, November has been a great month!

With the close of the election, we gathered together on campus the next morning to pray for newly-elected President Obama. It was such an awesome morning to have students come together and lay aside all political differences & spend time praising God for his sovereignty and praying for protection and wisdom for President Obama. In the heat of an election, it is so easy for Christians to become short-tempered and voice harsh words about others (including the candidates) and to others. It was a joy to begin the next 4 years on a positive and supportive note by honoring our President and praying for him like God desires us to (1 Timothy 2:1-3).

So excited for David Crowder!

The week before Thanksgiving, in leu of having a weekly meeting, we went with a large group of students to the David Crowder concert at Temple Baptist Church. Since we knew that we could not compete with Crowder himself, we had decided early on to cancel our weekly meeting and instead encourage students to come with us to his concert. For those of you who are not familiar with David Crowder, he is a Christian artist who has lead worship at many CRU events and also at the Passion Conference. We had a great time of fellowship with the students, as well as enjoying great music! 

The weekend before Thanksgiving break, our whole staff team travelled to Atlanta for our annual CRU Fall Conference. It was a very full and busy weekend, but it was so great to see our friends (and co-workers) from around the Southeast! After the conference ended, Mitch and I headed to Destin to spend Thanksgiving with my side of the family. I had not seen my family since August and I couldn't believe how much Caleb (our nephew) had grown!! He is by far the cutest little thing in the world but I guess I'm a little biased :) It was such a wonderful and refreshing holiday and I am so thankful that I got to spend it with my family!

Sweet little nephew!

Best Thanksgiving outfit ever. 

With Christmas right around the corner, and our one-year anniversary of being at Southern Miss coming in January, we thought it was about time to send out some prayer cards! I cannot confirm when they will be arriving (as I do not know yet- but they are ordered!), but I can leave you all with a sneak peek of some of the photos we took.

And just to leave you guessing, we have some big news (no we aren't expecting) to share next month of an opportunity we were presented with while at our Fall Conference. Stay tuned... :)

Fall Festivities

Since the ministry has really taken off this semester, we have been able to have several fun events this fall to gather together for fellowship & the occasional s'more. A couple weekends ago, to celebrate Southern Miss' homecoming, CRU hosted our very first tailgate on campus! We spent the day watching football, hanging out with students & friends, checking out the homecoming parade & floats, and munching on tailgate food. It was a great day with beautiful weather and uplifting fellowship.

It was a great day with beautiful weather and uplifting fellowship! If only the football game had turned out as well... Between Auburn's season and Southern Miss' we pretty much avoid all social media & football commentary on Saturdays now. Praise the Lord that we have something greater to live for than football, right?

Claire, me, Kate & Yasmin

In addition to the tailgate, we also hosted a CRU Bonfire on the night October 25th in the middle of Lake Serene! (Literally... the lake was drained) The Hamilton family was so generous to allow all of us to come out to their house and build an extremely large bonfire AND hang around until after midnight. We spent the night hanging out, making s'mores, "cutting" fire wood, & running around the empty lake.

 It was a great night and a lot of people joined us for "s'more" CRU fun (Sorry, I just couldn't resist). Everyone enjoyed the night so much, we are hoping to have one before Christmas break when it is actually cold outside this time!

Our women's event this month was a very festive night of pumpkin painting! Elizabeth hosted the night and made two very delicious chili recipes that added to the fall-like theme. We had a lot of fun painting and spending time together, although painting pumpkins sounds a whole lot easier than it actually was! I will be sticking to plain old orange pumpkins from now on. 

This fall has been so fun and we have been overwhelmed with how much growth we are seeing in the ministry as well as in our relationships with our students (and friends!). Since Christmas is just right around the corner, I know we will be having many more festive nights coming soon to CRU!

CRU Fall Retreat 2012

Now I may be biased since this was my very first CRU fall retreat, but it was AMAZING! Thankfully, Southern Miss' fall break fell right around the time we were planning on having our fall retreat this year so we were able to spend 3 glorious days and 2 nights down in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Gulf Shores Beach Retreat Center

Since we are studying the Sermon on the Mount this semester in our weekly meeting, we decided to spend the retreat studying and meditating on the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:5-15). We kicked off the extended weekend Wednesday night, October 10th, with a night of studying the attributes of God and praising Him for who He is; focusing on "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name." 

Day two started off bright and early with breakfast cooked by our staff team (mainly the Andrews), followed by our second session where we studied "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." After Andrew H. talked, we had 4 mini break-out sessions where we shared different ways that students & staff had gone to the world to share the gospel through word & deed. The students got to spend 15 minutes at each of these stations hearing testimonies, seeing pictures, & hearing about opportunities for them to go (or stay) and make a difference. Our 4 stations were East Asia summer project, South Africa summer project, International Justice Mission (IJM), and the USM campus. Each of these places have a need to share the gospel and a desperate need for laborers and it was awesome getting to share those needs with students who are willing and eager to go. 

After a time of devotion & a quick lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beautiful, and overly-warm October weather on the beach. That night, we headed to dinner and then split into guys' and girls' time for our Thursday night session: "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." We spent the night in great discussion, teaching, & encouragement about the specific sins that we each struggle with as men and women. To end the perfect day, we capped out the evening with a bonfire where we roasted marshmallows, ate (one-to-many) smores, and had great fellowship. 

Awesome bonfire photo thanks to Marshall's new phone!

The final morning, we ended with another great breakfast and a whole lot of cleaning up! After we had finally packed up most of our things, Andrew H. closed out the retreat with a great time of reflection over all that we had discussed over the past two days. In addition, he also surprised everyone with our spring break trip location: New York!! Although we do not have too many details yet, we know that we are going to New York City to share the gospel with college students on the many college campuses they have in the city (more details to come!). 

The whole group!

And of course, what's a good fall retreat without a couple of group pictures? In all seriousness, we could not have asked for a better group of students nor better weather for our fall retreat. God has blessed our ministry so much & we are so thankful for the time we got to spend in Gulf Shores studying His word, admiring His creation, and fellowshipping with His church!

Southern Miss CRU Staff Team

Catching up with the Jaegers!

Surprise! Once again I have allowed our crazy fall schedule to get in the way of my blog updates. On the bright side, this will be an interesting & event packed post!

Looking back on our fall semester last year, we are amazed at the things God has done in and through our ministry in just a year! When Mitch and I arrived in January, there were only a few community groups meeting through out the week but our goal as a ministry was to change that. One of our biggest prayer requests last semester was that God would accomplish this goal for us by creating community groups (bible studies) all around the USM campus. And just as He promises, God has been answering this request in bigger ways than we could have hoped! This fall, we have witnessed a HUGE need & desire for community groups in all different places. Several of our male students have begun community groups within their fraternities and have seen a great turn out. In addition, several of our female students have also begun community groups within their sororities and on Tuesday nights there is a catch-all community group for all sororities to come together and study God's Word. Along with these communities, we have a women's group, men's group, apologetics group, freshmen girl's group, freshmen guy's group, & a leadership group. God is doing such amazing things through our students and we cannot do anything but give Him all the glory for answering our prayer requests!

Eating the top of our wedding cake!

On a personal note, Mitch and I celebrated our first anniversary on September 24th. In honor of our anniversary, we spent the weekend in Decatur, Alabama, visiting family, friends, & places that we habited while we dated (including the 5 Guys where we met!). In addition, we decided to act upon a conviction that we had been having for awhile & finally have a believer's baptism. Although we were both baptized as children, Mitch and I both felt that we wanted to publicly share our testimonies with the church and symbolize our commitment to Christ through a water baptism. Although the water itself does not save a person, baptism is a symbol of the change Christ has made in a believer's life- death to our prior lifestyles & selfish beliefs and the beginning of a new life grounded in believing that Christ died for our sins and acting upon that belief. So, a year after we were married, Mitch and I were baptized! It was such an amazing opportunity to share our testimonies with the church & publicly symbolize the wonderful things God has done in our lives since saving us.

In the midst of celebrating our marriage, Mitch and I have also had the honor of celebrating the new marriages and weddings of our friends and family. The past couple of weekends, we were able to witness my (sponsor) brother Emmanuel marry his beautiful bride Lauren as well as my long-time childhood friend Jennifer officially become Mrs. Carver. Both were beautiful weddings and wonderful weekends spent catching up with friends and family!

Last, but certainly not least, we've added a new member to the Jaeger household. Don't get too excited-she's a dog not a baby :) Meet our newest pound rescue Weagle!

Stay tuned for our next update- we just got back from our Cru Fall Retreat and I cannot wait to share it with you!

Kicking Off the Fall Semester!

You will always be able to tell when a new semester has begun here at Southern Miss by my lack of blog updates! It has been a crazy couple of weeks but also an AMAZING couple of weeks. God has shown up even my greatest hopes and expectations for the beginning of our semester and I am so thankful and excited to share it with anyone and everyone who will listen!

Our Cru staff team returned back to Hattiesburg and began our planning on August 15th after spending our summers all over the world, literally. Andrew, Elizabeth & Wilson led a Cru Summer Project to Jackson Hole, Marshall helped lead a group of students in the Miami Summer Project, Claire helped lead students in the Greek Summit Summer Project (Destin, FL), and Mitch and I helped lead students in the Durban, South Africa Summer Project. Although we all had incredible summers serving the Lord through Summer Projects, we were very excited to get back to Southern Miss and begin the fall semester. This semester, we will be studying the Sermon on the Mount in our large weekly group meeting as well as in several of our community groups (small groups) through out the week. We truly desire for God to use us as salt and light on this campus and we hope that the students will join us in our efforts to establish the gospel's presence on Southern Miss' campus.

Two nights before school began, we hosted a Leadership dinner for 20 students who had voiced their desire to be ambassadors for Christ and leaders within Cru. Andrew casted vision for our desire for everyone student on USM's campus to have heard the gospel and for the campus to be known for their passion for God. In addition, Mitch was able to express the importance of establishing gospel communities (small groups) in each of our lives so as to share the gospel with all person's we are in contact with. It was a great and motivating start to our fall semester!

A few days before school began, we were able to host a Cru table during Southern Miss' Welcome Week. We had the opportunity to meet so many freshmen and give them the opportunity to plug immediately in to our ministry. The first day of school was on August 22nd and we kicked-off the semester by hosting our first weekly meeting that night. And here is where God truly blew our expectations out of the water: We had almost 80 students show up to our first meeting! And what is even more incredible is that those 80 students heard the gospel on their first day of school. God is amazing.

And just to further show how much greater God is than our expectations, we had almost 30 freshmen come out to our Cru Freshmen Cook-Out on Thursday night, August 23rd. We had such a great night of fellowship, meeting new students, cooking-out, and sharing even more opportunities to get involved with in Cru.

God has been doing so many amazing works here at Southern Miss since the beginning of the semester and all these amazing things are only from the first week! I cannot wait to share how He will continue to make Himself known here on this campus in the following weeks! Please continue to pray for our movement, our staff and the students involved, that we will continue to hunger for Christ and desire to live a life worthy of the works that we have been called to!

Durban Summer Project Debrief

Well we have been back in the States for 2 days now and we are still catching up on sleep and getting use to being back on Central time! However, adjusting to different times and schedules has not been the most difficult part, but adjusting to now having our team around us at all times. Spending five weeks in a foreign country without your friends, family, or any form of technology means that you cling pretty heavily to the team that you are living with. So you can imagine that not having that close group of people around you anymore requires quite an adjustment! We love being back home with our friends and family but we have been missing our sweet Durban team (and not to mention our sweet Durban friends!) a great deal.

The past five weeks have been an incredible journey for Mitch and I and we are so thankful to our supporters, friends & family for making it possible for us to go to Durban to serve the Lord. Because we had never staffed a summer project before, this trip was quite a learning experience for us. However, we have never felt more prepared or more assured of our calling to minister to college students. God was so gracious to us in allowing us to go on this trip and be able to learn & grow into more effective collegiate ministers. In addition, God truly used our trip to Durban to break both of our hearts for international ministry and different people groups. 

I wish that we could write down every single detail of our entire trip but that would be an overwhelming blog to read! We hope to get the opportunity to see everyone soon and be able to tell of our trip in person, but until then, we want to at least share some of our pictures- Hope you enjoy!

Music: After All (Holy)- David Crowder; Let us Love- NeedtoBreathe; Down at the Cross- St. Andrews Hymns

Durban: Week Five

We are finishing up our last week in Durban and although we do miss our friends and family very much, we are so sad to be leaving! We have spent the past five weeks with a group of 15 amazing students who we have become very close with and saying good-bye to them will not be easy. In addition, we have made such great friends with the UKZN students and interns, as well as Anele. Thankfully, Christians never have to say good-bye forever!

We have spent this week again at the UKZN Westville campus sharing the gospel and disciplining students. This past weekend, we had the privilege of witnessing 4 of our students get baptized in the Indian Ocean: Maddy, Paige, Jacob & Katherine. Although the morning was a little colder than usual, as a team we listened as they shared their testimonies and the things that God has been doing in their hearts while in Durban. It was such a sweet experience to be able to be a part of that special day with them.

This past week, we have spent on campus going out in pairs and sharing the gospel with students who are willing to let us share what we believe. Although we went into the week pretty tired and drained, God has amazed us with the number of students who have been not only receptive to the gospel but who have voiced their true desire to begin a relationship with Christ and walk with Him! It has been an incredible week getting to witness God use us and the students to share the gospel- as well as giving us all the boldness we didn't think we had!

We had our last small group on Tuesday night down at the student's favorite restaurant: Mugg&Bean (yes, its an American restaurant). Wednesday night, we spent the night reflecting on the past 5 weeks and all that God has been doing through us and to us. We also have slowly begun the debriefing process, which is going to be harder for some than others. After being on a 5 week trip overseas, it is often extremely difficult for people, especially students, to go back to their lives without having the support of their mission team around them. Because of this, we have been spending extra time encouraging students on how to make the transition as easy and comforting as possible.

Tomorrow we will attend our last weekly meeting on campus and then we will be heading for a night of bowling with the team to wind down. Saturday will be filled with more debriefing discussion and activities and our last night out to dinner. We will be leaving around 9 a.m. (3a.m. eastern time) Sunday morning for the States and will arrive in Atlanta on Monday around 2 pm Eastern Time. Please pray for our last couple of days here as well as for safe travel and lifted spirits as we leave. We cannot wait to get back and give you more details and stories from our trip and we look forward to seeing all of our friends and families!