BSU Annual Report 1000 Hills Association Annual Meeting Sept 2011

Greetings to our fellow lovers of the cross. Thank you! With a very sincere heart and genuine appreciation from all of us at the BSUThank you! Thank you to all the individual churches, to your members your family of believers, your staff, your council members, your supports, and to you for each individual one of you, for all the support and encouragement and prayers you have so abundantly provided to all of us here at the BSU. There is a tremendous volume of peace and encouragement that we as the BSU leadership and just students, receive from all the support and love that is shared by you to us through the year. We feel we have the best association and Christ-love-filled people over any other, and that is a wonderfully deep and powerful resource to know we have. So, before you read anything else, please know and share with all your family how much you continue to impact the BSU as we move forward to share the mission of our King with a world that is hurtingthat is desperatethat God wants them to know Him, in a very real genuine, intimate relationship. I thank you God that your word is living and active, and that your word still speaks powerfully to our lives. I trust in you by your Holy Spirit that this report would not only inform others of how lives are being impacted, but that it would speak boldly and relentlessly to each person who reads it of the desire you have for us to know you, and that we truly would see our lives more clearly see you more clearly and see your agenda for our world more clearly. I yield completely to you and thank you, in Jesus name, Amen.

This is a wonderful way to begin to share an annual report because what you are demonstrating is what we hope we will be at the BSU. Your serving and your giving and your loving and your glorifying God, says to us that there is a dimension in our lives that speaks to personal worship, to personal intimacy, to a personal love affair with God. That is a huge reminder coming from a very academic and steeped in learning environment that pervades most of the culture here at Truman State University. And it is a challenge for us as individuals here as we seek to help others meet Jesus and bring them to a place where they understand who Jesus is and what He did to make it possible to have a love relationship with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. To move beyond just the academic knowing and simply the bounds of religious activities among campus ministries such as ours, and to move into a love affair with the person of Jesus Christ. To be changed by the transformative touch of Christ.

What we hear and know and have been witness to: a student sharing his life and having conversations with another student, which continued all last year and of him giving of his time to help them with performing, practicing, etc,.- all going on and praying all last year, to come to freshmen week this year and that student share that she is now reading her bible a lot and attending a churchthe process continues praise God! Students who give of time and resources to help others out with just things of life, and in the process build real relationships that are leading to more conversations that are spiritual in nature. An influx of foreign exchange students who are continuing to engage with our students and now there is even a possibility of reviving a bible study for Asian students. Students who have known of Gods love and been in the system, but who are experiencing His love for them in a fresh way. Students sharing a feeling of being led into missions. Two adults, past retirement age, that have engaged with us and as God continued to draw them to himself over the entire year, started asking questions of spiritual thoughts, and by the end of the year in May, came to realize Gods love and all He did for them and both accepted Jesus as their Lord. Praise you God and Jesus and Holy Spirit! I think that sums up what our year has been and what our new year is starting as the deep desire for us to boldly share with our lives the truth that is truth, and to see His world that is hurting and to have compassion on that world and help bring others to a place where they can meet Jesus. Giving all of ourselves to Him with an unyielding committedness to followship and discipleship. And at the same time we move forward with His Mission with every ounce of our being, I believe God wants us to ask ourselves if we have a deep resource in Him with which the love of God will overflow thru our lives and spill out onto those around us. That we would be a group a people a tribe where there is a want and an intimacy and an overflow in a love relationship with Jesus. Our prayer is that God shows up in what we do; that says Without you we can do nothing, and we are clinging to the life and the truth of Jesus to be at work in us. Our hope is that they come into our lives, into the weekly worship service, the activities, the food, the small groups, the glow stick battles, the coffee house because God is there. Love in Christ, The BSU Tribe