Hey y’all! So, there’s so much to tell! Our group has met so many amazing people here in San Diego and really begun to form relationships with some of the people we’ve met. My ministry partner, Caroline, and I met this one seriously awesome girl who goes to SDSU. She is one of the nicest girls I’ve ever met. After talking to her for one lunch she asked us to go to a Young Adult Service at her church. It’s been amazing to hang out with her and get to know her. It’s also been fun to talk to her about the Lord. Learning her life story and about her relationship with God has been so encouraging. If y’all could be praying for her and her family it’d mean a lot. My prayer for her is that she wouldn’t feel the need to follow the rules of others, but feel the freedom that Jesus offers and be who He has made her (fearfully and wonderfully made).

We also met another amazing girl, who we met on campus because she was passing out flyers for a rally next week centered on Islam. I have never known much about the Islamic religion, but getting to know her and getting to know her values has been an eye opening experience. San Diego is so cultured and so diverse that there are so many different religions practiced here in San Diego. To see the center of their religions and what they are based on to me has been good for my relationship with Christ. I can see that God offers me something in Christ that other religions seem to be searching for. That instead of being completely unattainable he has changed for us in the most radical way: humbling himself as a man and bearing all of our sins on the cross. If y’all could continues to pray for our team on the campus and just our hearts. It’s hard doing ministry and keeping Christ at the center instead of putting our success at the center. It’s hard to rely on God’s strength and not our own. That’s why Christ entered this world because IT IS HARD! Our flesh can’t achieve anything without the Lord. We fail every day and every time we try to rely on ourselves. I’m still learning exactly what this all means in my life and how I live that out, but it’s been amazing to realize I’m not enough and I don’t have to be enough.

            We’ve also been doing some truly awesome stuff off of campus through Harbor Church. We were allowed to participate in three free car washes that Harbor hosted last week for three different neighborhoods. We just walked around knocking on doors and asking people if they would like us to wash their car for them for free. Of course people were skeptical because who isn’t skeptical of free things in today’s society, but when we explained to them that as Christians we believed it was our duty to serve them simply out of love people were so willing to come get their car washed and hang out with us. It was a beautiful picture of community and serving those in the neighborhoods. We also got to go to Hoover Highschool (where they hold the Harbor Church services in City Heights) and help them clean up their campus. We scraped up gum on the floors, mopped, washed walls, and moved desks. It was such a small thing that we did, but made such a huge effect on the building that we cleaned. It was cool to see that when people come together in community towards a purpose it can be easy and have such a positive effect. The church is making such a huge impact on the school and the community and I’m just so thankful that we are able to be apart of it.

            I’ve also posted below pictures of my trip so far from La Jolla Beach, Point Loma (sunset cliffs), a Spanish Mission in Mission Valley, The Firework Extravaganza, the padres game, and the boy’s prank on our room (the beginnings of a prank war)!

San Diego State! Oh Yeah!

The seals at La Jolla Beach 

La Jolla Beach

Me and Lindsay zlamin in San Diego

Point Loma Cliffs

My ministry partner, Caroline, and I 

The city view from Point Loma

The sunset from Mission Valley

A beautiful cross at the Spanish Mission

The Fireworks

Padres game. What a view it was!

Brittany putting her game face on for the prank war to begin!

Yes, those are 20-30 bags of balloons and tiny cups that were full of water. And yes, they were all over our room when we got home last night. Tricky guys, tricky.

Hey y’all! So, it’s been a week in San Diego and the Lord has already done so much. There’s so much to tell and so much to share. We got here last Tuesday and I realized to my disappointment that the wonderful restaurants I had heard about here in San Diego (like In and Out Burger) had the calories listed on the menu and needless to say it is something you’d rather not be aware of when you’re eating a greasy cheeseburger. But besides that minor detail San Diego is completely wonderful. As everyone told me the weather is AMAZING (a sunny, 70-degree day with a slightly chilly morning and night). The landscape and the culture here are both so diverse and beautiful that I’m honestly overwhelmed every time I go into the community or walk out the door and see the mountains with the variety of flowers and foliage that they have here (Christine it’s some good foliage!). We toured both the SDSU and the UCSD campuses and both were so beautiful. They’re a little bit bigger than Presbyterian by about 29,000 students so it’s a little different for me being on a campus like that. We also visited the Harbor Church that the Campus Outreach branch here in San Diego will be centered out of.  And it honestly was the most amazing experience I’ve had with a church family. The pastor, Stephen Phelan, and his wife, Bradford, came to speak to us and shared their testimonies. Their love for Christ and motivation in coming out here were inspiring. I could see how well they have loved those in the community here despite the things they had to leave back home in the South. One amazing story from this week that really has shown me God’s faithfulness in prayer has been a woman that Lindsay and I met at church on Sunday. We were about to enter Harbor on Sunday for worship and introduced ourselves to a woman named Maria. She lives walking distance from the high school where they hold the worship service (located in City Heights) and this was her first time coming to Harbor. Previous to meeting Maria, Lindsay had prayed that the Lord would present us with an opportunity to talk to someone who had never visited the church before and here Maria was! The Lord set her in our path and we had a lot of really deep conversation with her about her past with the church. We asked her to sit with us at the service and at the end when we split up for a time of prayer Lindsay and I asked if she would like to pray with us. She didn’t feel comfortable praying with us yet, but asked us if we would pray over her for the Lord to open her heart and let Jesus in. When she said this I couldn’t help but feel completely overwhelmed with God’s love. She had asked such an honest prayer and has opened up to a few young strangers. God had opened her heart to us and I knew he is the only one that can open her heart up to Jesus. Him using us as a vehicle to ask those things of him just made me feel very blessed. Maria told us she was going to come back next Sunday to Harbor so if y’all could just be praying that she would return and that in her honest words he would, “open her heart to let Jesus in.” That’s just a tiny, tiny morsel of what God has been doing here through our team and in front of our eyes so please continue to pray for us as we enter the SDSU campus this week!!

"You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your righteous right hand there are pleasures forevermore." - Psalm 16:11

With Love in Christ,

Sara

Hey guys! So this is the start of my blog and the start of what is going to be an amazing summer spreading the glory of God on the college campus in San Diego. I can't believe it, but there's only 11 days until our team leaves!! The closer it gets the more I cannot wait to be there and to see what the Lord has for us in San Diego. I can't wait to have more to share and amazing stories to tell of God spreading his love to those who need Him in California. But a big thanks again to all my supporters and all those who have kept our team in your prayers! Continue to do so please as the date for our mission gets closer. 

Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all peoples.

~1 Chronicles 16:24

With Love in Christ, 

Sara