The Opening Challenge: "Abide in Me"

They have certainly kept us busy this first week of our internship! I'm down here with 9 other interns, all of whom are from Central College in Pella. We've spent a lot of time together so far, and it's been great to get to know them. The four of us girls live in our own rented house with Ascent staff member Emily (who is a great house mom and spider killer). Four of the guys are doing the internship for their second or third time, so they are living in a rented house in the inner city with two other Ascent staff. The other two guys are first year interns like the girls, and they are living in the Ascent "home base" house with two staff members as well.

Our schedule settled into what will become our normal routine by the end of the week. My looks something like this:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Weekend
Morning (8-12)	Work at Hope Faith – delivering furniture, serving food, sorting clothes, building relationships with staff and clients, eating lunch with clients.
Afternoon (1-5)	Teaching at Ryan's house ("Home Base")	Prayer in the IHOP (International House of Prayer) Prayer Room	Manuscript Study of Zachariah at Ryan's	Prayer on our own	Teaching at Ryan's house	Every other weekend: Bible study in Pella. Otherwise, our own free time.

So much has happened, that I'm not sure where to start in relating it all to you. Two other interns, Sean and Jodie, and I began our time at Hope Faith Ministries (a homeless day center) this week. Jim, our supervisor, took us on a tour and explained to us the purpose (to glorify God and tell people about His Son) and history (full of God's powerful working) of the ministry. I'm very glad to have been assigned to Hope Faith for the summer, as the staff are sold out for Jesus and the programs they have in place really impact their clients for the better. I'm sure I'll have lots more to tell you about Hope Faith throughout the summer! If you'd like to know more about them, I've posted their link on my home page.

So far, everyday has been packed with learning about God. A real focus of our internship is learning and practicing what the staff calls abiding. Other people call it being constantly in prayer. Basically, it's the idea of being constantly plugged into God. Our day of silence on Tuesday was sort of abiding initiation -- a whole day with just ourselves and God. We were given a short book to read called Practicing the Presence of God, written by Brother Lawrence in the 1600s. What a challenging and encouraging read! Brother Lawrence describes the way that he constantly fixes his heart and mind on God, simply for the love of Him. If you're like me, you'd like to be able to do this, but know yourself to be too distracted and broken to be thinking of the Father all the time. But Brother Lawrence reminds his readers that God's grace does not depend on his children's worthiness. When we fall, we don't have to beat ourselves up, because God expects us to fall and gives us grace to pick ourselves up and turn to Him again. It's that simple! We just turn our hearts and minds back to God and never expect to be able to succeed without His intervention. This will be my challenge and joy this summer: to seek God with my whole heart, learn to wait silently on Him, and keep Him at the center of my thoughts and actions all day, picking myself up by His grace alone when I fall.

In your prayers next week, please pray that Sean, Jodie, and I would have confidence when reaching out to the clients at Hope Faith -- it's hard to know how to start a conversation with someone in a homeless shelter. Also, for the clients there -- that their hearts would be open to our friendship and God's love. And please share your requests with me, that I may be in prayer for you as well! You can always email me at lxpskr.dordt.edu.