This past weekend was the New England Students Fall Conference calledFusion! Personally, I like the fall retreat much more than the spring one (the fall one is in a hotel and the spring one is camping). This was my 4th year going to Fusion, and as usual it was a great time of fellowship, and most importantly a great time spent in theWord. The speaker this year was Tony Merida. He came my sophomore year as well, and I was looking forward to hearing from him again. The theme of the weekend was "Contending for the Gospel." The conference starts on a Friday night and goes through Sunday morning. The weekend consists of 4 sessions of worship and sermons and lots of free time to build relationships and talk about what we have heard. The session titles were "Following Jesus: 3 Crucial Questions," "Making Christ Known in a Diverse City," "Adoption: the Highest Privilege of the Gospel," and "Love: the Final Apologetic." All of the sermons encouraged students to be bold with the Gospel and to seek out opportunities to share their love through sharing the Gospel. Tony also talked about what it looks like when we withhold the Gospel. If someone is about to walk in front of a bus and you see them, how much do you have to hate that person to not say anything? By not sharing the Gospel with those around us, we are doing exactly that. According to Romans 6:23, "the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord." Non-believers are walking towards that bus, and by not sharing Jesus Christ with them, we are hating them and watching them walk towards death. I think this really struck the students, and challenged them to change their view on sharing the Gospel with others. I pray that students will take what they learned and apply it to their everyday life, rather than toss it aside now that the weekend is over. I also pray that students will become more in love with the Gospel, because it's hard not to talk about the things you are passionate about.
During our free time we played a lot of games and frolicked down the beach! It was a great time of getting to know more students and students getting to know each other more.
I also got to see my friend Sarah Landry! Sarah was a
summer missionary in Providence two summers ago, and is now doing the 10:2b internship in Lowell, MA. I was excited to see her again and catch up briefly during the weekend. There are
currently 5 of us in the 10:2b program at schools in
New England (currently only in RIand MA), so we thought a group picture was necessary.
(From left to right: Sarah & Lauren (UMass Lowell), Chris (Worcester, MA), and Me & Kim (JWU))
We take a group JWU picture every year, and it's always a struggle to get everyone organized. This year we also took a picture of the leadership team, basically every one of those pictures turned out weird...I guess we were trying to look cool in this one, but Jessica and I ruined it by smiling.
Leaders from left to right: Cat, Arthur, Jessica, Jake, Melissa, Travis, Me, Kim, and Zach
