the Wild Wild West

Having heard the good reports from Chadron, Terah and I packed our bags to head out west. Our basic goal was to connect with the student president and leadership team, and to see first-hand what God is doing on campus. It was a great time to meet with these awesome leaders and hear their heart for the lost on campus. The weekly meeting was on Wednesday and their leadership team meeting was Thursday, so it worked out great for us to stay for a couple of days.

On Wednesday we were heading out to Chadron when I got a call from the student-president saying that their speaker for the weekly meeting that night had cancelled and so I ended up getting the chance to speak. It was a good meeting, but that night there was a campus-wide speaker (a news anchor for CNN) whom the school had brought in...AND they had her speaking the the room that CCC normally meets in at the same time!!! Suffice it to say, that I wasn't real optimistic about the night's turnout. To my surprise, the room was full, and the meeting went great (see picture). Also, the leaders are (for the first time) setting in motion a strategy to reach the campus with multiple small-groups...very exciting.

The next day Terah and I drove the 1.5 hours up to Rapid City to check out the School of Mines, which does not have a Campus Crusade for Christ movement. It's a promising small school that we may end up launching in the future. Absolutely gorgeous country up there.

You may have heard about the fire that was raging out near Chadron this summer: thousands of acres were burned to a crisp. The amazing thing was that the fire came all the way up to the CSC property and over the hill on the edge...but then took a sharp cut away from the school. Almost no damage to the school.

We took the picture below (middle) just outside of town- you can really see the contrast between the land that wasn't burned (near) and the ashes (far). Everything over the bluff is burned, everything. Fenceposts, trees, all the grass. You really feel for the ranchers that lost all the pasture land and fence...it's supposed to take three years for it all to grow back.

-Ethan