The past couple of days have been truly enlightening!  We have spent a lot of time in orientation, which for us means a lot of focussing on evangelism and how to engage in cultures that are so different from our own.  We have gotten to know each other, pray for each other and the people we will encounter, and the city, which is awesome!  We have also learned a lot more about what we will actually be doing this summer.  

We found out that STARTING MONDAY we will be put into ministry teams.  Each ministry team will be assigned a home campus that we will go to twice a week and minister/evangelize/have spiritual convos with students.  Two other days out of the week we will be going to different college campuses (ones that staff have not been to yet) and we will be looking for students who are believers who might be interested in starting a ministry at their campus.  This last one is super exciting because most college campuses in NYC don't even have 1 Christian organization, and this is a great opportunity to change that.  On Friday's we will each be meeting with an international student.  We are going to be assigned an international student who may or may not be a believer.  We will be hanging out at least once a week, hopefully getting into many spiritual conversations, and hopefully sharing the gospel.  I am so excited about all of this!  I am also excited about the bible study I will be in, and being discipled by Caitlyn( a wonderful woman of the Lord on staff).  Along with all these awesome things we will still be meeting at least once a week with our Dinner group (I sooo love mine by the way), and having a Campus track dinner/cultural immersion (like going to eat authentic foreign food).  Wednesday nights are free nights, and most Saturday's and Sunday's we are off.  I can't wait to finally get into a steady routine :)

Aside from all the orientating, I have gotten to do some pretty stinkin cool things in the last few days.  LAST NIGHT the Campus Track went for our first cultural dinner in Little Italy.  We ate at a very authentic restaurant ( I had the most amazing primevera ever) and then had Gelato afterwards.  Lots of laughs and good conversations to go along with that experience.  After that several of us took the subway over to the Brooklyn Bridge.  It was soooo amazing...I am in love with the architecture.  We took a lot of fun pictures, it was rainy and foggy so it looked really neat!  We were still thirsty for more so Jordan, Malia, and I went over to Time Square.  It was my first experience and I was at a loss for words...it was so amazing!  

TODAY before Orientation we got to have extended time with the Lord.  It was so amazing!  I went to the NYC Library (the one featured in day after tomorrow) to hang out with Jesus.  That place is so beautiful!  It is old, gorgeous, and so quiet!  I read John 3 which is an awesome passage.  It is about this dude named Nicodemous, who sorta believes in Jesus but he has tons of questions.  Jesus pretty much lays out the gospel for him...I thought it was pretty cool that I ended up reading this because of the fact that most people you get into deep spiritual conversations with have crazy questions like Nicodemous...and what a great passage it would be for me to use as a refference, God you a so cool!   After we were done with all of our orientation stuff a couple of us went and walked around Grand Central Station AND THEN everyone went to the MoMA (Modern Museum of Art).  I have been waiting for this alllll week!  I was extremely excited about getting to see Van Gogh's Starry Night, it is my favorite painting ever, and he is one of my favorite artists.  MoMA is home to a lot of his work.  However all but one of his pieces are touring in Europe right now, including Starry Night.  I was so sad, on top of that they didn't have any of Monet's stuff either.  But the lady did tell me that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has some of both of their works so im gonna hit that up.  On a lighter note I was moved beyond words by this experience.  We went through the entire place with our dinner group...and our dinner group has like 4 artists in it out of 7 people so we were there a while.  I got so excited when I realized that Warhall, Matise, Picasso, and Jackson Pollock's stuff was there...seriously when I saw Pollocks Number 1 I started to tear up, I mean it just looks like a bunch of splots of paint but when you get up close to it you can see the emotion, the technique, its just so amazing...to top it off there was a whole room full of his stuff...I was like a little kid in a candy store going through the painting exibition.  Afterwards my dinner group headed back to our side of tizown and went up to the roof of the vogue and watched the sunset.  Followed by a good ole slice of new york pizza and a quick trip to KMART.  Now my feet hurt, its 2 am and I have to go to bed.   

Again I am amazed and every second that goes by I am reminded of how awesome it is that God has me here.  How brilliant it is that I am already learning things.  And how beautiful it is that God is bigger than one of the biggest places on the planet, and that he has chosen me to reside here with about 60 other beautiful students who love Jesus and we get to tell people about him.  Jesus you are so great!