Proclaim: VFC Welcome Week 2012

Zach Varnell Sep 17, 2012

We are into the month of September and time already seems to be flying! Welcome week (the first week of school for the students) was a whirlwind of surveys, bottled waters, meeting new students, Frisbee games, and ice pops. From 8 in the morning till late in the night the interns set up booths around the dorms, gave out information about our ministry, met and talked with hundreds of new students, organized Frisbee games and basketball, and gave out waters, ice pops, Gatorades, hotdogs, and lots of Rita’s Italian Ice. We had night booths with Rock Band, snow cones, tie dye, cornhole, and watermelon. On Thursday we had our first VFC meeting with 79 first-time guests. We hosted a free BBQ dinner at the VFC House where we fed over 200 students on Friday, and then took them all tubing down the Little Pigeon River on Saturday. It was a wild and busy but fun and fruitful week. Here are a couple of stats from the week.

  • 1,200 lbs of ice
  • 2,500 bottles of water
  • 1,000 surveys filled out
  • 600 folks interested in more information
  • 6 5-gallon tubs of Ritas and a line that stretched for about 100 yards
  • 400 Sno cones
  • 200 tie died shirts
  • 2,000 activity cards
  • 400 Popsicles
  • 320 hot dogs
  • Over 100 people playing ultimate frisbee
  • 79 first-time VFC guests at our Thursday night meeting
  • 100 Don’t Waste Your Life books given away
  • 500 BBQ flyers

We have seen God already answer many prayers. One in particular was our prayer for favor with the students. At each of our events students seemed to hang around for a long time, lingering like they enjoyed being with us! Many of those students ended up coming to our Thursday night meeting, to church the following Sunday,  and have even been attending ever since. So I believe God has answered our prayers and given us favor with students. And it encourages us to pray even more for all the upcoming tasks.

We absolutely could not be doing the things we do without the finances, prayers, and encouragement we receive from you. So thanks!

Please pray for our upcoming fall break conference, Anthem – that students would be excited to go, and that Greg Gilbert (our guest speaker) would faithfully bring God’s Word to us. Please pray for the new students, that God would use VFC to bring people closer to Himself. Please pray for the interns, that God would give them grace to work hard, and that they’d have opportunities to share the Gospel as God would allow.

What a privilege it is to be a clay jar carrying the treasure of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I can’t believe we get to do this!