Sara in San Diego

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