The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of preparing for school, both with international students but also with OUR new students (J-12, & C5 are going to new schools & T-8 is going to 3rd grade).

It has been incredibly fun to meet new students at the various different campuses. This year I had the privilege of helping out on three different campuses with welcome events. The fun of it is meeting all these different types of students. On one campus I met a Chinese student who was so excited to see that there was a Christian group on campus for international students. He became a Christian in China and is really wanting to grow and seemed very excited about his walk with God.

On another campus, I met another Chinese student who said that while he wasn’t a Christian, he enjoyed getting to know Christians at his previous campus in Florida and so he was very interested in learning more about what we do. That reminded me how often God takes students through a process of bringing them to himself through a journey of studying around the country. At each stop, the student gets a different but consistent (hopefully) perspective of just who Christ is and His affect on people’s lives.

Here is one other observation. In the past ISI worked very closely with the international student offices in directly being a part of the orientation, sharing about friendship partner programs etc. But it seems today, things are different. Several years ago, it seemed the international offices were more reluctant to allow that having concern that they be identified with a Christian group.  Instead they have allowed us to have a table at activities fairs, etc. At first this was a difficult change for many of us. But recently as ISM (International Students Ministries) have adapted, we have found that the table could be even more effective in reaching students. There is more time to “personally” interact which is more important in this generation of students rather than  interacting  in an official capacity. The result is not relationships not built on external motivation but internal motivation. It has been awesome! At TCU, it was cool to see almost every international student at a reception last week having our bright pink flyer and likely they all had direct connection with a student or ministry partner at the table we had set up. I saw the same sort of thing at UTA and UTD as our team really touched almost every new student in a personal way. No matter what… most students were able to see a loving personal response from some believer.

Kudos to our whole team who are doing a great job of adapting and touching many more students because of it!

Tagged Big Howdy, new students