Hey guys,

I feel like summer is going by super quick, which in a way is super awesome, because all the stuff I’m learning out here in Colorado is making me stoked to get back home and back on campus.

To say LT has been a whirlwind so far would be an understatement. I’ve been super busy. Between playing electric guitar in the Tuesday night band (which takes a lot more preparation than playing bass, at least for me), working 40 hours a week, doing a theology study group once a week with a few people from my project group, planning for and leading a life group (basically a core group), memorizing John’s 99, swimming 3 days a week in the mornings with John and Andrew, and working on stuff for the Rock music team with Andrew, just trying to find an hour or so every day for prayer and reading my Bible has been a struggle (and I usually just end up doing it during the countless slow hours at work, like right now as I type this up). Not exactly ideal, but I think it’s working out pretty well.

I’ve also been learning a crazy amount of stuff already. One thing that was especially eye-opening for me was some relational evangelism training that John did on our last project day called Son-Life training. I’ve talked to Chris about having all of us as equippers doing some version of this, because I really do think it’s an awesome program. Basically it just made me think about my relationships with my non-Christian friends, and whether I’m really pointing those towards Christ. The only problem with the training is that we do it in the 2^nd week of LT, and now I’m stoked to get back on campus and put it in practice.

It’s also been a weirdly tough summer, just being away from my family and the built-in support system they provide me for the first time, and being away from the community of guys I’ve surrounded myself with these past few semesters (basically it feels super weird not having a cup of coffee at Dumas before I go to bed). I’m leaning more on people I’m not super familiar with, and of course trying to rely more on Christ, so that has been both an incredible challenge and an awesome learning opportunity.

All in all, I’m super excited about the next 9 weeks and all that I’m sure I’ll learn, but I’m also already super stoked about all the momentum that I feel building up for going back to campus.

-Joe

PS I didn't reread this after I wrote it because that sounded boring, so I'm sorry if there are errors or parts that don't make sense.