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LAUP Starts in 3 days…

I don’t know if one is every truly “ready” for a summer project. Everything is taken care of that needs to be taken care of… I think. But somehow I wish I had more time… Things keep on coming up that make this more difficult.

Take our LAUP team, for instance. We started out with 10 people on it and four of them are not going to be able to make it this summer. That leaves us with a team of six…

Is that good or bad? In ministry, numbers are not everything. (Though it’s so easy to use them as a measure of “success”. But that deserves a different post later on.) In this instance, I sense that God really is at work for the good of the individuals who are coming and for the good of those who can’t make it. But it is beyond my faculties to know that for sure.

Sometimes a program as intense as LAUP is just too intense for a person. Other times, it’s just not the right timing for where they’re at spiritually or otherwise and God truly does have other (better?) things in mind for them.

Take last summer for example: I was really trying to get a friend of mine to come to LAUP. She had just graduated from [Cal Poly] and said “no” for a variety of reasons. Later that summer, because she was not doing LAUP, she started dating the man (another friend of mine) who is now her fiancee. And that’s what God had in mind for her. But I didn’t know that at the time. (And what God’s will is is so clear in hindsight, I know… but that too is a post for another time.)

Right now I’m really excited about this year’s team though. We’ve got a dynamite mix of Latinos, white folk, one South-East Asian (Indian), and some multi-racial folk (myself included) as well. I look forward to what our unique backgrounds and cultures will bring to our team and to God’s work in the city. I also expect it to be a bit difficult at times as we struggle to understand one another, be vulnerable, and grow as a community.