Sharing the Load

In August of 2008, I was just getting back to St. Louis from having spent 6 weeks in Cairo, Egypt. I was beginning my internship with InterVarsity and we were preparing for the upcoming school year.  I had never been behind the scenes in starting a school year in college ministry and I was curious to see how exactly we were going to go from seeing random people walking through the quad to getting those people to come to our Bible studies.  But, there was at least one freshmen that already had a connection with us.  We had heard that one of our co-workers had a fiance who had a younger brother coming to SLU as a freshman that year.  We figured that at least he would come to our Bible study so I felt a little better.
The Wednesday after school began, we were at SLU Fair, the student organization fair where all the student groups on campus congregate to tell freshmen and other folks about the groups available to them.  My supervisor pointed at a kid walking through the crowd and said, "I think that's Cris' younger brother!"  We called out "Robert!" (we heard that was his name) and he came over to the table.  A few minutes later he was wearing one of our signs on his chest and handing out fliers - three days into his freshman year.
Flash forward four years and Robert is now stepping on to campus to begin his Intern year with InterVarsity at SLU (and even living with me until I get married!).  That's him sitting next to me in the picture above.  Robert would spend a lot of his freshman year in one of our Bible studies before coming on to our leadership team and serving as one of our primary leaders during his time in college.  Robert is a good friend and a gifted evangelist with a huge heart for international students on campus.  He will be spending most of his time this year working with me at SLU, training and discipling cell planters, and leading out in our outreach to international students.  He'll also be spending some time scouting and potentially chapter-planting at Flo Valley Community College with one of our co-workers.
It's been over two years since I last had a staff partner at SLU and I am so excited for how God will use our partnership to grow both Robert and I and to bless the campus and students.  Praise God for community in mission!