September 11, 2010

TFN Bible Study, Bowling & Games - Minnesota

TFN Bible Study on the Minnesota Campus

We initially weren't planning to have a bible study this week due to the numerous social events happening throughout the week. However, so many students told us they were looking forward to bible study that we decided to go ahead and meet!

Lo' and behold.. 33 Students came out to TFN! This is despite the sudden rain! We started off with a hilarious time of "best of the best" where there was much joy and laughter. The students loved it! There was so much energy in the room.

Then Pastor Timothy share from his 23 years of being around college students to urge the students to make the most of these precious four, five, maybe six years in college. He shared how he has seen how the values we develop during these 4 years really sets the trajectory for the rest of our lives. The students were very attentive, leaning forward, fully engaged and really seemed to soak in the message.

Afterwards, many showed interest in coming out to our Sunday's Open House and 11 additional students signed up for lifegroups!

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Bowling & Boardgames at Goldy's Game Room

All the students from the bible study plus another 50+ additional students joined us for a time of bowling and boardgames! We met at Goldy's Game Room and the place was happening! It was smiles and laughter everywhere. Everyone we met mentioned that they had a really good time. It was good to see so many new faces as well as our regular attendees!

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Thanks for your continued support and prayers. We are so excited to have so many new people show so much interest in learning about God and open to building relationships!

Until next time... another fun video from back at our BBQ & Picnic!

- Gracepoint Team

The 1st Toss from Balloon Toss

Clip of the first balloon toss. Unfortunately despite being 4 feet away, one Minnesota member is unable to catch the slow moving balloon. What happened? Wasn't paying attention? Slipped on the grass?... see his response.

September 9, 2010

New Student Welcome Night @ Minnesota

New Student Welcome Night @ U of Minnesota

NSWN is here! We'll skip updates for day 4 and jump straight to NSWN day! We started the day with DT and an extended time of prayer. Then we went to Timothy & Alice's to load up our U-Haul with all the food, sound equipment and everything else we needed for tonight. Then several of the brothers headed over to the church building to grab the rest of the sound equipment.

Publicize with Everything We Got!

After we finished we went to spread around campus to do the last push in publicizing new student welcome night. We put up our latest posters, our newly labeled flyers, chalked all over campus and of course just met students where we could.

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Setting up for New Student Welcome Night

At 1:30 we all showed up at Coffman Theater to setup for New Student Welcome Night! We unloaded our U-Haul at the East Loading Dock. The backed our U-Haul into the dock and quickly took everything up to the Theater. It was our first time holding an event there and so everything was new to us! Meanwhile we had people grilling the bbq meat. After several run thrus, we were ready for the students!

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NSWN - Where are the students?

6:00PM - Only 1/5th of the theater was occupied! Perhaps it was going to be a smaller turnout than expected? Perhaps the students are just delayed due to classes ending? We started to show some trailers inside as we waited for more students.

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6:15PM - INTRO: Only half the theater was occupied... but it's time. Let's begin. Jon Fu started us off. He was the our energetic MC and easily the tallest MC we've ever had. After our usual pump-everyone-up opening, we moved onto praise.

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6:20PM - PRAISE: Praise was awesome of course. Our band was a mix of praise members between all 3 churches! Gracepoint Berkeley on the guitars and the singing, Gracepoint Davis on the bass, and Gracepoint Minneapolis on the drums! By the time praise was over - we turned on the lights and... the theater was COMPLETELY FULL. Awesome.

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Powerful Challenge to Seek Answers to Life

6:35PM - VIDEO: Next we showed our the Josh L. Video adapted to the Minnesota campus. The red shirt was from Wisconsin, Minnesota's rival! That got a lot of good laughs. So did the psycho roommates. Love it.

6:45PM - SKIT: The skit went very smoothly without a hitch. Our narrator Jarold surprised us by being even more hammy then during any of the practices! The skit team did a great job and we heard many favorable responses from the audience in our various conversations.

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7:05PM - MESSAGE: Pastor Timothy gave a strong challenge to both believers and non-belivers to really take this time in college to really think about the deeper questions about life and about God. From the many who were eager to come to our bible study and interested in checking out our church, it seems many took up the challenge.

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7:25PM - SPECIAL MUSIC: Our band played "meant to live" by switchfoot to close this time and really send home the message that we really need to think about why we live and the need to figure it all out. "We were meant to live for so much more. Have we lost ourselves?" "We want more than this world's got to offer, And everything inside screams for second life" For our members we had a special treat as Eric was asked to play bass last minute. Not only did he play well, but he put on a show...

7:30 - Final Announcements. Everyone now headed to the Mississippi Room for BBQ and Games!

454 Students Attended NSWN. 153 Freshmen.

BBQ & Crazy Fun

Once we situated all the students into the rooms, everyone spent time getting to know each other playing the spin and share we've been doing in our other welcome nights. Then... hilarity began.

Everyone played the number game as different groups started breaking out into songs, jumping jacks, rock paper scissor contest, striking poses and of course eating gross treats. The students seemed to have a lot of fun and got really into it.

All in all, it was an incredible time as we got to meet and got to know many new students. Many showed interest in our bible studies and our sunday services. Please continue to pray for the students that the message they heard will continue to resonate in their hearts. Thanks so much for your prayers! Gracepoint Team

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September 6, 2010

Acts2 BBQ & "Special" Sports, Stone Arch Bridge Trip - Day 3

Thank you for your continued prayers!

Today was another packed day full of prayer walks, outreaches, publicity and numerous events.

Chalking for our Events

In addition to prayer walks and meeting students all over campus, we also spent time chalking for our events. The rule is that chalking is ok, as long as it is on sidewalk pavement and it is in an open space where rain can wash it away. Considering it rains very frequently here, the weather cleans the campus regularly.

Today we chalked for our noon BBQ & Picnic as well as for our New Student Welcome Night. It would later rain and wash away all the effort we put in, but that simply means we need to go out and do it every morning!

BBQ & Picnic

The BBQ & Picnic at River Flats Park was our big Monday event! 120+ people showed up to enjoy a time of games and food. We did play what we promised in soccer, volleyball and football but we also introduced to the city of Minneapolis our fun, heart warming games of chicken & egg, elf/wizard/giants, water balloon toss and braveheart! Many of the student enjoyed these novel games because it really gave everyone a chance to get to know each other. There was a lot of laughter throughout and many lingered all the way to take down.

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Stone Arch Bridge

We had a special event in the evening: a trip to the Stone Arch Bridge. What is that? It's the bridge overlooking St. Anthony Waterfall which is the starting point of the Mississippi. Yes that Mississippi! It was the original location that powered the first flour mills which helped birth the city of Minneapolis. It's a beautiful area to visit with the small waterfall, some old mill ruins and of course the beautiful view. We didn't publicize this event. We had invited students who we happen to know as well as those who came to the picnic. 17 students joined us for this cozy trip!

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Games @ Yudof

As the rain started to pour in, we hunkered down at Yudof Hall to play some board games with some of our new friends. 6 friends we knew from before, plus another 14 new faces, mostly from Yudof Hall joined us for this event. We had an awesome

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Work Work Work for Everyone!

Before, between and after these events, we had team members constantly working hard in doing outreach, postering, chalking, flyering, researching, cutting, printing and so on. Like every night we gathered at Pastor Timothy and Alice's place to continue working and planning for the upcoming events.

Tomorrow's big event? Sports at the Armory Gymn.

Keep us in your prayers!

I'll post some videos tomorrow.. so come back!

Paul & Gracepoint Team

September 5, 2010

Sunday Service in Gracepoint Minneapolis - Day 2

Good Morning Minneapolis!

Today is Sunday. Sunday means Sunday Worship Service! We were pretty excited to have our first sunday service here with the Gracepoint Minneapolis members!

Our day started with a time of DT at Coffman Memorial Union. Afterwards we had a quick huddle outside [see pic] where we spent some time to pray for all the students on the Minnesota campus as well as for all of today's events.

Prayer Walks, Eating Times, & More Sports

We spent the entire day doing prayer walks throughout the campus, taking the time to really soak in all that goes on in this campus. We then spent some time eating in the dining halls :). Afterwards we had some people play freesbee near the Bailey Hall as some of us went to Centennial Hall area located in the heart of Super Block. Super Block is where a large number of dorms are located. We played some basketball and volleyball but alas, didn't get to play with many of the students because everyone was taking off for a school sponsored event where they bus the freshmen to "uptown". Uptown from our understanding is a strip of bars and restaurants usually crowded with 20-30 somethings... sigh. Good news is that a freesbee in front of Coffman drew two dozen people and led to some good conversations.

Sunday means Sunday Worship Service in Minneapolis!

At 7PM, we had our sunday worship service at the University Baptist Church, across the street from campus. We saw a few students we had met from previous events come to our service for the first time! Very exciting. It was also great for the Minnesota Team just to have such a big congregation filled with many familiar faces. We got to see some usual suspects doing sound (Roy), and others not so usual like John on Propresenter and of course John "Korea" leading praise! Awesome.

Afterward we all headed to the fellowship hall, where we got to eat some delicious pound cake, fruits and vegetables snacks as we mingled with the newcomers.

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Welcome to Sunday Worship Service in Minnesota!

Praise & Worship in Minnesota!

Post Service.. Fellowship!

Every Night is Work Night in Minneapolis

We all headed to the St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church to just work on various work projects, especially in prep for upcoming activities as well as, you know it, new student welcome night - T-minus 3 days.

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New Student Welcome Night Skit Preview!

Another packed day, another packed week still coming.

Please continue to pray for us for all the events coming up, especially for the weather! The weather is so fickle here and so many of our events are all outdoors.

Thanks. We miss you all

Paul & Gracepoint Team

September 5, 2010

Gracepoint Berkeley & Davis Arrives to Minneapolis - Day 1

Hello!

Thanks for all your support and prayers back at home. We will try to post some pictures and videos here to keep you all updated. Please feel free to grab pictures and videos to post updates on your ministry sites.

Below are short description is followed by the Pictures/Videos. More detailed info will come directly later on.

Thanks!

Gracepoint Berkeley & Davis Arrives to Minnesota

First group consisting of most of the Gracepoint Berkeley team and some Gracepoint Davis team arrived around 11PM Minnesota time! There was great excitement as everyone got to see their old young friends! We were greeted with smiles, hugs, and large trays of kimchee bokumbap! The rest of the team arrived in the middle of the night around 5AM!

Next morning we had team time in a nearby Catholic church who graciously has allowed us to use it for our team times in the mornings and at night.

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Quick Tour of Minnesota Campus, Key Locations

On the first day we started by taking a quick tour of "the U" (as it is refered to by the students). University of Minnesota is a beautiful campus. We broke up into our various teams led by different Gracepoint Minneapolis staff..

Picture #2 - These are bulletin boards that display information of the latest campus events.

Picture #3 - This is the "Great Hall" which would easily seat 800-900 (seems bigger than Willard). One day we hope to pack this place with students for our new student welcome night.

Picture #6 - This is Coffman "Field". It is right outside the Coffman Memorial Union building, one of the central buildings on campus. Many students go in and out of this building so we hope to hope many sports activities right outside.

Picture #7 - This is the Main Road "Washington" that runs through right through the campus in front of Coffman Memorial Union.

Pictures #9 - The underground tunnels for those cold winters. You can pretty much get around campus via these "gopher ways"

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Talking to Students, Postering, Chalking

We spent and will be spending lot of our day just meeting students and holding special events. We've been talking to students everywhere we go, from student halls, dining halls while also publicizing our events through word of mouth, posters and street chalking. Unlike some of the campuses back home, there doesn't seem to be many club related events going on. We've been passing out 1000s of flyers, postering all over campus - never has a student group seemingly done so much publicity! We are also the only group to chalk on campus. Luckily (unluckily? is that even a word?) the constant and random rain storms clean the chalk keeping the campus nice and clean.

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Frisbee, Football, Shaved Ice, Board Game

Our big event of the day? Frisbee & Shaved Ice @ Rivers Flats Park! Which quickly became Football, Frisbee and Shaved Ice as many guys were interested in playing football with us. It was a full 10 on 10. Very fun.

Soon a huge ultimate freesbee game broke out. Some students came by word of mouth, some because of street chalks, others through posters, and some just happen to be walking by and saw us playing and joined us. We had plenty of time to mingle and get to know some of the students. Fun times!

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Glow in the Dark Night Frisbee

Later we had a group doing tons of prep back at Pastor Timothy and Alice's place while others played board games inside Coffman. After that we all went to play glow in the dark night freesbee at the Coffman Field. On the building it says "Welcome Students, Stay & Play" - oh how convenient! Though most of the freshmen were away on a school sponsored trip to Mall of America, several students who skipped out on the event joined us to play and talk. Some very good conversations came out of this time. We are looking forward to future times when more students will be around!