Hey friends!

Just a quick update and prayer request for you:

On Thursday, a big debate is taking place on campus between James White (professor and Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and Christian) and Dan Barker (founder of Freedom From Religion Foundation, and atheist).  It's looking to be a big event, and is being held in Foellinger Auditorium, a large venue.  The Illini Navigators is co-sponoring this event, along with a couple atheist/agnostic groups on campus.  You can see the poster below.

Please pray that many students (both Christian and non-) would attend.  Pray also that God would be honored and glorified by James, and that He'd tactfully and wisely represent the Christian faith.  Obviously we'd love to see James "win" the debate (if it's possible to clearly win), so pray to that end, but pray also that this debate would spur on many spiritual conversations, that Christian students would handle them well, and that people would be drawn to Christ.  Thanks!  I'll post an update on how it went.

-noah

What do these three things have in common?? They are three "hobbies" of mine that God has given me in preparation for being on full-time staff with The Navigators.  Read on....

The baking is self-explanatory!! In ministering to college students you can never have enough homemade food and baked goods.  In coming to the U of I my love for baking has been very useful!! The group is small enough that I can bake for the whole group on a weekly basis at Nav Nite (even without Ronni Bernardy's help!!) as well as for different small group bible studies.  You can never have enough food on hand!!

Writing thank you cards is something I love to do which is very fortunate as I am weekly (if not daily) writing a thank you card to the countless people whom have blessed us in so many ways.  Thanks to all of you who pray for us and the students and thank you to those  who support this ministry!! We appreciate you all so much and each thank you card is truly from the heart!!

As for the NOT watching tv... I have never really enjoyed watching t.v. Over the past few weeks I have become very thankful for this because we don't get to do it very often!! Since arriving April 1 at the U of I we have found ourselves on campus or with students three... or four... or five... or even six nights a week!  (Depending on the week!)

It is really fun to see how God cares about the small things and has prepared me (and us) perfectly for the job He has called us to!!

We plan to update soon with some specific details about the next few weeks (the end of the semester for students at the U of I!)

Mmm!

We gave the U of I students a taste of Wisconsin last Friday night, our first night hosting students at our house!  God gave us a beautiful evening, and we had a blast!

Norm's killer hand.  Surprisingly, he didn't win.

The winners of the euchre tournament, Kyle and Karley, received Wisconsin-produced prizes:  beef jerky produced from my neck of the woods (Minong, WI), and cheese from Katie's (Shullsburg, WI).

We're enjoying many opportunities to get to know our students better, and have them get to know us.  We're so blessed to have a house to host them in!

-noah

We hope you all had a fabulous Easter! We were so blessed to have my family spend the weekend with us in Champaign.  Having them here helped make it feel more like home although  I was sending out some cards tonight and starting writing our old address as the return address multiple times.... We know adjusting is a process.

We learned a few things this weekend.

--For one, I thought I was prepared to have my family here, but I guess it was foolish of me to think that 2.5 gallons of milk would be enough for three days (Thurs night- Sunday afternoon).  Not even 4 gallons of milk were enough! (Yes, that's right. We all grew up in Wisconsin!)

--Our one bathroom can handle 6 people AND our hot water heater can handle 6  HOT showers in one morning!

--4 hard-working guys can get a LOT of yard work done in a short period of time! We collected two HUGE van loads (see pic) of sticks and 20+ yard bags of leaves.  It sounds like our yard hasn't been taken care of in a LONG times (according to our neighbor it now looks better than it has in 5 years!) THANKS DAD, MATT, SIMON and NOAH!!

--Nothing makes your house feel like a home more than a mother's touch! Thanks to my mom for all of her help in decorating our house, it is starting to feel like home.

We enjoyed some great time together.  We walked around the campus, spent lots of time in the yard, celebrated my mom's upcoming birthday,  played lots of Carcasonne, and tried to focus on the meaning of this Easter weekend!

The lyrics of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross really hit me this weekend. 

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all. "

The great sacrifice of love that God showed me (and all of us!) warrants all I could ever give.  My soul, and my life aren't enough.  Jesus wants my ALL! May we all seek to give HIM our ALL!

This is what we woke up to yesterday:

Ah!  Wisconsin's following us!

We've had a wonderful few days with the Navigator Staff from the Illinois/Indiana region.  God's surrounded us with a wonderful group of caring people who are involved in exciting ministries on several campuses.  We're excited to get to know them better.

We haven't been home much during these meetings, so we're excited to settle in this week and begin to interact with students and continue to get settled in.  Starting this week, Katie and I are going to be joining in on Bible Studies led by other staff here.  We're excited to interact over God's Word on a more personal level.  In the coming weeks, we'll be studying The Master Plan of Evangelism; looking at Jesus' plan to reach the world with the Gospel.

We're settling in!  And the high tomorrow is 58!  Yahoo!

Here's some pictures.  Katie's done an amazing job of setting things up.  The rooms not shown here need quite a bit of work still :)

I just wanted to take a second to update you on a VERY exciting moment of our lives.... we unpacked our suitcases and put them into the storage closet.  For those of you who know what our last few months have been like, you understand how big of a deal this is! It means that we will be sleeping in the same bed, staying in the same place for AT LEAST the rest of the month!

Things are going well so far.  We are trying to get settled in our house.  Yesterday we were on campus selling bracelets for threads of hope (http://www.threadsofhope.com.ph/.).  We also got library cards (I know my sister would want to know that!) And added money to our parking key thing-a-ma-jig.  We're getting there...

Tonight we will be going to Nav Night (in EC it is Nav Nite here it is Nav Night.  It may take some getting used to... :))

We hope to add pictures soon! Thanks for your prayers!

We'll we have safely arrived in Champaign! THANK YOU for all of your prayers!  The driving went very smoothly but  unfortunately it was pouring rain when we got here.  Good thing the students were committed to help us move in rain or shine!  They were VERY helpful and by mid-afternoon everything was into our house..... and I was officially overwhelmed! Even in my desire to get organized, I could not force myself to get started! Thankfully  Jess (on staff with us here at the U of I) stuck around and faithfullyl helped me unpack and organize our kitchen! After that HUGE task was accomplished we felt much better! We look forward to spending the next couple of days getting things organized!  Noah is actually on campus tonight and I am over at Jeff and Jess' house.  (I was too afraid to stay home alone in a new house on a decently busy street with no curtains at 11 pm at night.)  We are so thankful to finally be here (although it hasn't hit me that this is supposed to be home!!!)

P.S. I told some friends that I want to be more of a blogger when I move to Illinois (there are a lot of new things I want to try to get into...blogging being one of them). I found my life in Eau Claire to not be "blog-worthy".... Most people who read my blog probably know everything I know about Eau Claire... But anyway-- here is the first (of hopefully many) random blogs about life in Champaign:  Twist cones at McDonalds are only $.53!!! Noah (who used to work at McDonald's) asked me to get out $1.04 and then the worker said $.53.  Noah even asked the worker if it was a special, and they said no it's the everyday price! So come on down to Champaign and get yourself a $.53 twist cone!