Happy 4th of July!
Our CCP team is currently in Garden City, South Carolina, visiting Summer Training Project (STP). We are here to lead a missions themed week, be sent out in prayer, and cultivate interest among STP students in joining a future CCP team. Some of us have already had conversations with students who are interested in joining the CCP team next year, as well as others who are interested in missions as a whole. This has been a restful week, and it has prepared our team well for CCP.
We arrived at Project on Friday, June 26th. On Monday night, the CCP team led the theme night. Theme night happens every Monday and is a rally centered around a specific topic, featuring a game, testimony, speaker, and worship. This week's theme night focused on missions. Our CCP director, Josiah Forker, spoke about missions by connecting the theme of STP ("Promise") with the theme of CCP ("Triumph"). The title of his message was God’s Promise to Triumph over the Nations. His talk was a wake-up call for many STP students about the urgency of reaching the billions of people around the world who have never heard the gospel. There are 1.5 billion people across the globe who do not have access to a Bible in their native language. This is a statistic that many Christians are unaware of, and it is a sobering reality that we must not ignore. Billions of people will live their entire lives without ever hearing the good news of the gospel. It has been especially encouraging to have conversations with college students at STP who are interested in missions!
On Wednesday morning, 60 Project students joined the CCP team for Prayer for the Nations at 5:45 a.m. Prayer for the Nations is something that Campus Outreach emphasizes as an important part of college ministry. As a college student, I have grown in my awareness of the need for the gospel in other nations through praying each week for the world's most persecuted countries in my discipleship group at Northwestern. The STP students and CCP team prayed in small groups, first for the nations as a whole and then specifically for New Zealand and the University of Otago. Later that day, our CCP team had our first discipleship group, where we discussed what we have been learning in our daily study of 2 Corinthians. This is something we will continue each week while we are in New Zealand, along with joining discipleship groups with students at the University of Otago.
On Thursday night, our CCP team led a social. A social happens every Thursday at STP and is designed to build community and strengthen relationships among the students. This week's event was a scavenger hunt led by our CCP team. Students completed a variety of challenges at a local outdoor shopping and entertainment complex to earn points. One of the tasks was to find CCP team members who were disguised throughout the shopping center.
Tomorrow, the CCP team will begin our three-day journey to New Zealand! We have five connecting flights before arriving in Dunedin on Tuesday, July 7th. Please pray for our team's health and safety as we travel, and that there would be no flight cancellations, delays, or other travel mishaps. Thank you, for your support and prayers. This truly wouldn’t be possible without each one of you!
– Olivia Usselman, CCP student
