Sunday was a great day of communication and conversation for Jeff and I. You know when you have a day where the conversation is fluid, there is understanding, everything is laid out on the table, a space for openness and honest, and a time of listening. Those of you who think that marriage makes communication so much easier, it doesn’t. I do hope that it gets easier with years of practice but somedays it feels like there is a completely different language spoken from ones’ mouth to the other’s ears. Thus, Sunday was very refreshing!

We have been working on the next newsletter to go out to help expand on what we will be doing in Romania, and lately it has been hard for me to truly wrap my mind around the details of it or how to begin to share it with you. Jeff is a visionary and sees big picture and is filled with ideas. I, however, need a written out list of the details and how these goals are going to be accomplished. This is why Sunday was so good. On our way to church, Jeff was telling me about his job and we have been reflecting on the past week at welcome week and meeting so many new students. During church God told me to look at what Jeff was doing in his job already and how happy he was last week, getting to spend so much time with people and students excited about missions. I then had my epiphany.

Our Romania ministry will look like what we are doing here, but hopefully on steroids (not us, but our ministry).

Let me explain.

You already know that Jeff is the Co-president for Fuller’s Intercultural Studies Program (non-fuller terms: helping to lead the student government of his degree program.) He works with students who are passionate about culture, the Lord, and going on mission. He helps set up events to make students and the community aware of global issues and how they can get involved through partnering organizations. Jeff and Mark’s(the co-president) goal for this year is to help build more partnerships between organizations in LA and globally that students can intern or get involved with after Fuller. This past week was welcome week, where tons of new students came into Pasadena from all over the world. Some came for years on the mission field and others are trying to find what type of ministry they want to be involved in. Through their cabinet(the group of students volunteering with them) they are putting on events on spiritual growth, culture shock and re-entry, self care, etc.

So…God was pointing out to me that Jeff is so happy being with students excited about missions, learning what it means to discern their call, and what it means to live a life following the Lord. And then God was like, Uhmm….see he is already doing that! Oh duh Lauren! Why didn’t I put this together before!

I have said it over and over that California is a stepping stone for us and here is just one more reason. We are here to learn how to do marriage together, how to be away from family, how to keep in touch with people far away (some of these are more for me), how to live in christian community through our Church, how to make new friends in a new place, how to get to know a new city, how to do adult things like get insurance, how to trust that God is going to provide…and God is now saying how to practice ministry with students. California is our training ground!

In Romania we want to do discipleship, to encourage students, to empower them in their call, and to help develop unity between denominations and cultures. This comes through living life with people and intentionally building and feeding the relationships we make when we are there.

We are learning to do the same thing here.

Anyway, this is my epiphany. I don’t know if I made any sense but how awesome is the Lord! He knew we couldn’t go straight to Romania and be effective. We needed to be here to learn first.