Saturday, February 12, 2011

first college outreach

We have been very busy the last couple of weeks as we have been reworking our groove to fit into a culture foreign to us in every sense of the word.  Despite our lack of experience getting things done here, we are learning tons of valuable lessons and seeing the Lord use us to encourage some of the Indian people we are in contact with on a regular basis.  We have also been blessed with several opportunities to reach small and large crowds through different functions we have attended, including a pregnancy celebration and thanksgiving dinner, a pastors' conference, a large village crusade, and a college campus outreach in which we planned out all the details.  We have also been finding that participating in these events and outreaches is a huge blessing to us, individually and as a team.

The college outreach happened just yesterday evening at a local junior college that is located less than a mile away from our house.  It is a co-ed Lutheran college that has a lovely, tree-filled campus with an outdoor stage that we were able to use to put on an hour long program.  The program consisted of live music lead by Chris, with Cory on a second guitar and Taylor on drums.  The guys did 2 cover songs from popular American artists and one Hillsong worship tune to wrap up the night.  Crystal and John were our fabulous MC's and helped the program to run smoothly and transition well between activities.  After the first 2 songs, Lizzi presented and lead a game from the popular TV game show Minute to Win It.  We asked for volunteers to create 2 teams (one of guys, one of girls) to compete against each other in a game where the contestants had one minute to get as many little cookies from their foreheads into their mouths without using their hands!  The outcome was hilarious to watch, as completing this task took an array of facial twitches and creative moves to accomplish.  True to Indian culture, the girls were extremely shy and no one wanted to volunteer to play for the girls team.  After a whole lot of rallying, we got 3 girls to attempt the first round of the game.  The second round was a little tougher in the participation department so myself, Crystal, and Bethany jumped in to play for the girls and we totally schooled the boys, scoring a total of 6 cookies to the boys 3.  After 3 rounds, the boys ended up winning and were each awarded 100 rupees, the equivalent of about $2 (but it goes a whole lot further here than $2 would in the states).  After the game was over, Cory preached an awesome message about stepping out in faith, a truly relevant subject for the college students in India.

It was a seriously amazing night that turned out even better than we thought it would.  We absolutely did not anticipate the reaction we got from the crowd of 250 students, but we give all the glory to God for bringing His presence and joy into that place!  The whole team had a ton of fun planning the event and making it all happen and we are looking forward to doing more of these types of campus events in the near future.  One of the main goals of our team is to research the viability of a 2 year residency program with a specific mindset for the youth and college age demographic in this area.  We also are working on making a presence known in the local colleges and universities as we represent the name of Harvest India.  On February 25th, we will be holding an even bigger event on the Harvest India campus for all the colleges in the area (that will include more live music and even choreographed dancing!).  By doing these smaller campus outreaches, we are able to spread the word for our big blowout event coming up in a couple of weeks.

We are calling the Friday night events The Bridge and this is the flyer that Cory designed for our upcoming February 25th event:



Please enjoy a couple of photos from the event last night!









1 comment:

  1. Go Rock Harbor India team!!! You truly "ROCK!"
    I was realizing this week in prayer for you, that I hadn't heard mention of your connection with your young target population. This is awesome- you are off to a perfect start with fun, community building, music and God's word.(Congrats preacher Cory!) I am excited for what God and you all are doing. I am praying.
    Love, Diane Cherin (Thanks for the update Elana)XOXOXO

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