Thoughts from the Sunshine State

We have returned from Summer Conference 2010! The above picture is of me and freshman, well sophomore now I suppose, Sam Carper. Sam was one of our students that came to Freshman Bible study regularly. Sam caught the winning catch in the Ultimate Frisbee tournament at SC!!! She is from Tulsa and is a wonderful part of our community :)

John Stone, former RUF Campus Minister, was the speaker our week. Amidst many funny stories, anecdotes, and tangents, he clearly presented the gospel every night. One of his more memorable talks was on forgiveness. While he did borrow this from Tim Keller, John Stone said, "To the extent that you see how much you have been forgiven, to that extent you will forgive and love others." Wow. This statement makes me want to study, learn, and appreciate my forgiveness. I want to be a good forgiver.


The above picture is of two of our cherished students. The guy sans-cowboy hat is Wes Martin. He is normal the one donning the hat. I think I saw him for the first time ever this week not wearing his cowboy boots. He is from the rural Oklahoma town of Tallequah and is getting married next week. The guy sporting the cowboy hat so proudly is Ben, and has just finished his freshman year at OU. He is another one of our freshman Bible study attenders, and is from Wisconsin. To say that this guy loves sports in an understatement. We bantered about the Gators and Tim Tebow quite a bit!

Summer Conference was chocked full of activities for our OU crew. We layed on the beach and swam in the ocean everyday. The waves were pretty strong, and schools of manta ray kept swimming by. Some students formed an ultimate frisbee team and won the SC bracket!!! Every night we had ice cream outside Doug and Julie's apartment and debriefed from the day. One night both Doug and Bentern got thrown into the pool. It was pretty priceless. Speaking of Bentern...


Ben and I are proud recipients of airbrushed t-shirts, courtesy of OURUF. I really like mine, which has a dolphin on it, but seeing Ben open his t-shirt was priceless. His t-shirt has emblazoned on it his nickname, "Bentern," and the turtle from Nemo. Both of those things made Ben giddy with excitement over his gift. I think there is an official facebook petition to change his facebooke name to "Bentern Nichols." Students claim they go to search for him, but can't find him because they don't think to search for "Benjamin Nichols."

SC '10 was a great success!!! I am in Florida now for a couple of weeks, and am currently visiting some college friends. Yay for summer!

The Semester's End

Greetings from Norman, OK! Students are in the middle of finals, and will be done this weekend. Then, about 40 of us will head to summer conference in Florida. Before any of that happens, however, I would like to catch you up on some stuff that has happened here:

- North Texas Presbytery: Last week Ben, Doug, and I took a trip to Dallas for Presbytery. We saw two ordination exams. Brent Corbin, a former OU RUF student, passed his ordination exam. It was great to see our denomination at work. Ben, Doug, and I got to eat at this cool place called "Eatsies." I think you could eat there everyday for a year and never have the same thing twice. It was super cool.

- Relish Projects: This semester in our leadership team, Relish, our topic has been personal growth. We have been reading The Disciplines of Grace by Jerry Bridges. Each week there has been a project due. The projects have included a poetry project, a service project, an art project etc. The semester finished with a "personal project" that students choose at the beginning of the semester, and have been working on throughout. These included but are not limited to: learning how to cook, writing songs for an album to be recorded, running a half marathon, and a photography project (me!). Below is a picture that I really love but did not find a place for in the final book. That gross lookin' stuff is called Hooflex and I put it on Chance's hooves to keep them strong. I feel like this picture captured how messy this stuff is!

- I stuffed 150 envelopes with my news letter last night to send out to my supporters. If you do not currently get one of these, please let me know- I would love to send one to you!

- The John Williams Project is going splendidly. Every week when students come over to watch the Office, we play a movie afterwards. The last two weeks we have watched Star Wars, which I had not previously seen. The Empire Strikes Back has been my favorite. This weekend I watched Schindler's List with some people. Three words come to mind: horrific, intense, awesome. The next two movies are Amistad and Saving Private Ryan. Apparently we are going with an intense theme.

- I leave tomorrow to drive to Florida. Summer conference will go from Monday May 17- Saturday May 22. Please pray for safety for our students as they drive a long way from Oklahoma to Florida and back. After summer conference (and Anna McDowell's wedding!!!), I will be in Florida for two and a half weeks. I am having an after service lunch at Christ Community Church on June 6th. I would love to see you!

- Boomer Sooner!!!