Latest Happenings...

We've been having a blast meeting new friends at the Westview apartments. The Iraqi families have been extremely hospitable in welcoming us into their homes, both for English classes and also just to hang out.

Over the past two months we've hosted several dinners at the Deason's house and, most recently, a women's party held at Convergence. About 30 Iraqi and American women showed up, bringing with them all sorts of delicious food, games, and dance music (boy, did we dance the night away!). It was a wonderful culture swap for all the women who came.


Apparently the men are jealous of our fun and are now planning a party for men only, but I doubt that they will be able to match ours in overall awesomeness.

As always, let us know if you're interested in joining this campus group, we'd love to have you!

Goodbye Party!

Cokesbury met twice this week, first for our normal group time where we consumed delicious Korean food (thank you girls for providing this!), catching up on the stories from everyone's summer travels, singing, prayer, and Bible study, reading this week from Luke 10 about being sent out as trusting laborers into the fields of people God has prepared to hear the Gospel.

The second time we met was to have a farewell party for Scott, since he is getting ready to follow Jesus' direction in moving to Waco, TX for further missions training, as well as to celebrate the new semester beginning for everyone remaining at OCU.

Our table at Zio's recieved many strange looks from fellow patrons due to the uproarious laughted that emitted from it throughout our dinner. Whoever decided it was a good idea to put paper and crayons at the dinner table was certainly a genius of epic proportion. What a blessing to have such fun friends!

After a nice walk around Bricktown we stopped by Cold Stone for some ice cream. There we reflected upon the things that God has taught us over the summer and were greatly encouraged by each person's testimony. It is always wonderful to hear about how God loves us and is faithful to teach us things that strengthen our trust in Him.

We are all looking forward to what this new semester will bring!

Baptism!

A young woman from Campus Church and attendee of Internationals group was baptized!

We are so proud of HyeYeon for her decision to follow Jesus and know she will do great things in the lives of others! Here are some pictures below-

Studying Pentecost

Acts 2:1-13-

On Sunday night, Scott spoke about this passage in regards to God outpouring his Spirit upon the new church. This was a really powerful message that had many people asking some hard and good questions, including:

When do I know that I am experiencing the Holy Spirit and not just my own thoughts?

Do we have the Holy Spirit?

Is the Holy Spirit just a feeling?

Why did God choose to give his Spirit to the new church in the way that he did?

Have I experienced the Holy Spirit for myself?

In what ways does God speak to us?

Some of these questions were answered to the best of our abilities, while other questions were lifted up individually for God to answer to each of us.

During our time of prayer, we prayed for a powerful presence of the Spirit with us, to know Jesus more fully. We wanted God to come and love on us and answer the questions we might have.

God was faithful as he always is.

A cool story from the night:

As I was praying, I felt God telling me to put my arm around one of the girls, he wanted to do something in her heart. As I did this, my arm began to feel pretty strange, warm and tingling. Most people were going back and forth praising God through prayer in our group. Scott closed us out in prayer. The girl looked at me and said, "what just happened!?" She said she felt something powerful come over her. Then Scott had received a picture from the Lord about her. He said Jesus came over to her while we were praying and wrapped his arm around her and kissed her. He also said that Jesus really wanted to just begin to transform her heart and give her more of himself.

Not only this, but the Lord gave Scott another picture for another girl in our group, which ended up being very impacting on her and gave her some encouragement.

One of the girls in our group described the night as miraculous.

The Lord revealed himself to all of us on Sunday night just as we had asked him to! It is so wonderful to know that God really wants to answer our questions and give us more of himself, all we need to do is be willing to receive that gift.

It brought me back to one of Kenny's sermons about Thomas. He said he wouldn't believe in Jesus' resurrection until he felt the scars himself. Instead of being angry that Thomas questioned his power(or just needing to experience something for himself to believe), Jesus used the opportunity to strengthen the faith of Thomas by showing up and revealing himself. As my sister Amy once told me, sometimes our questions need to be our prayers.

Have a great night!

The Love of God

This post is meant to be an update on everything that has happened over the course of the last several weeks. We have a had a phenomenal season of exploring God's love and also what it means to love Him and His people in return. One of the most fun things that has happened in the past several weeks is that on Valentine's Day one of the girls in the group was miraculously healed from a sore throat, and a coughing attack, that had been affecting her for about a month. God is so good!

I would also like to wish Will Peacock all the best as he has headed off to his officer training for the Navy. We would do well to continue to lift him up in prayer while he is away because he will definitely be having his limits stretched.

We are also planning on having a party within the next few weeks and I will continue to keep the blog updated on any new information regarding that.

New meeting time

This is just to remind everybody that our new meeting time, decided upon, is 5:30pm on Sunday. We will still plan on meeting in the management office at Cokesbury.

This is the first official post on the new Cokesbury group blog. It has been a great couple of weeks and I am looking forward to getting into this new semester and making a lot of new friends. Last week was quite a bit of fund as we spent a decent amount of time trying to tackle some riddles, to the point of even getting a little frustrated that and elementary school boy seemed smarter than us. It also sounds like everybody had fun on their trips to Colorado and to Las Vegas.
Tonight was our first night with Scott as a leader and things are off and underway moving into this new semester. After some discussion, we have decided to move the group to 5:30pm on Sunday nights and there was a big debate on whether or not to call it "Rainbow" or "Mosaic". It took us a while to twist Erin's arm but I think it's safe to say that we are now team Mosaic. We were especially privileged tonight to welcome our new friend Rose from Seoul, South Korea. I'm excited to see all of the new faces we will get to meet this semester!