All around my four-state area ministries are re-starting this fall. Faculty groups as well as Grad student groups are regathering, face to face in most places. Here’s what it typically looks like. At Creighton for example our professional student group is focused in the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions (Pharmacy, Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy). Kathy Padilla is the best person I’ve ever worked an information table with! This year we had loads of very lively conversations at the end of which we had a stack of 19 contact cards. And that’s how it gets started.

Kathy is an InterVarsity alum, supporter and leader in our local faculty ministry. She teaches Spanish at Creighton and is the faculty advisor for our GFM group and our undergraduate chapter. She loves meeting students. She loves InterVarsity. And she loves Creighton University.

Pray for Kathy as she restarts her new year. Faculty at Creighton are relieved to be using only one platform this semester – face to face, in-person classroom instruction! After three semesters of turmoil and the complexity of being sometimes in-person, sometimes on-line, she’ll get to hear her students parse Spanish verbs live and up-close.

Pry also for this stack of cards! For the students whose names are on them, that is. This is what we have to re-start our fellowship this fall at Creighton. Last year we were a virtual community of at most 10 students. I met with three of those students for leadership, encouragement and prayer. The rest we met up with via our zoom bible study in the book of Ruth. We’re hoping to rebuild in-person community this fall. We’ll be meeting on the first and third Thursdays of the month. We’ll meet in-person for the first gathering, share some food and enjoy being together to do our bible study. The second meeting of the month will be virtual via zoom. We’re hoping to include distance students and alumni at our virtual gatherings.

Pray for me as I work through the list of people we met. I’m hoping to connect one on one before our bible studies get started. The biggest challenge with professional students in programs like Pharmacy or OT is TIME. Their programs are very demanding and all-consuming of their energy and attention. Pray that GFM will become a source of community they deem worthy to work their other commitments around!

RE- studies

So where are the rest of those RE- study guides Tim? They are in the works. I’ve been generating the entire series in rough outline form. So far I have identified 13 RE-moments I think will work well. They’ll be rolling your way soon. Isaiah 61 – RE-new, Psalm 85 – RE-vive, Mark 5 – RE-claim. And on and on. They’re coming!

Please keep us in your prayers as we get things going here in the rest of the month of August! Thanks so much.