School Starts!!!

Cole had his first day of kindergarten a couple weeks ago. He was so excited and a little nervous. The school is a 7 min walk away and one of my good friends from church teaches 1st grade there so we get the inside scoop. It is a great school and he enjoys it immensely. His only complaint so far, it's not long enough!

Still smiling when we picked him up after his first day. That's a good sign.
Lydia also started school a few days after Cole. She goes tuesdays and thursdays and also loves it. She goes to a public preschool nearby and as you can tell by the other names on the lockers, it is very diverse, including internationals. She loves it and it's nice because she doesn't know any different. She's probably just glad the teachers speak english!
School started for our kids but at the same time we were gearing up for WSU's start. We had our Action Team in Training (AT 'n T) a few weeks ago. We spent about two days with our leadership casting vision and preparing for the fall start-up. It was a sweet time and some of our upper classmen thought it was the best one... yet.
One of the first things we do to reach out and connect to incoming freshmen is moving them in. We partner with Wright State to do Move In and this year we had over 30 students from XA volunteer! WSU loves us and always has so much praise for our group and what we do on campus. First weekend is a crazy weekend with move in, Do the U, Orientations, Boogie on the Bricks and Painting the Rock. And this is all within 2 days time. Our students have been rocking it so far. They have been reaching out and loving on students. We have had more students already get plugged into XA and our first meeting isn't until tonight! The world pulls students away so quickly that our hope is to get as many Christians plugged into groups on campus before they fall away from lack of fellowship. One need we provided for the first time this year was a church service on campus for all of the students who just moved in but have no idea where to go to church yet. Since it was our first one, we didn't do the best with advertising but still got amazing turn out! Over 45 new students came out for it and were very grateful to have a place to go since most of them would have just not gone anywhere. We worshipped, Steve spoke on making it a point to feed yourself through God's Word, we ate donuts and passed out a flyer with local church info. It was a sweet success and we loved meeting that need. The University must have liked it too because we found out later that it was on their website. Next year we're hoping to partner with the orientation stuff that goes on all weekend and make it officially through the school.

It was the perfect setting for a service, outside by the gardens and right next to the dorms. We will need more chairs and blankets next year!