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!