Christmas Tree Time

For our first Christmas together, we decided to cut down our tree. The day after Thanksgiving, we drove to Petersen Tree Farms in Anoka, MN and cut down a balsam fir tree together. Here are pictures from the farm and the finished product

Thanksgiving in MN

We had Thanksgiving here at the Currie's (the director of COM). We ate outside because it was such nice weather. Here is the picture of us with their five kids

Men's retreat

We had a men's retreat for NW students this past weekend at a farm about an
hour north of the cities. We called it D-Quad (Dudes, Dating, Discipleship,
and Dark Night Games). We had 31 gus come on the retreat. We watched a
sermon by Mark Driscoll on dating Friday night, followed by a game of
capture the flag in the dark. Andrew Knight and I talked about Christ
increasing in us (John 3:30) and the Kingdom increasing through on Saturday
morning. We talked with the guys about coming on our Christmas Conference
http://www.chicago06.com We also had a "Paul Bunyan" contest to see who
could chop down a tree the quickest. We actually bent the axe. That is the
picture below. Jennifer is going on the women's retreat this coming
weekend.

Leaders Time

This is a picture of our leaders at Northwestern College. (We are in the picture as well). We had a time a couple of weekends ago where we gathered our leaders to talk and pray about what it means to be a leader in our minsitry. We saw God sharpen the vision of so many of our students. Our director, Ken, came and shared what it means to be "poured out like a drink offering," as Paul writes in 2 Timothy. He talked about the significance of the term "drink" offering. When you offer a drink for sacrifice there is nothing that remains once it is burned up. Grain or animal sacrifice leaves ashes, but the drink offering leaves nothing behind. What a great picture of how we are to live our lives here on earth. We have already seen how God has used that weekend to help make our students more intentional with their time.

Jennifer's Group

This is a picture of the sophomore girls group that Jennifer is spending time with. She is on the floor on the right. Ashley is next to her on the floor (she is the other girl on staff that helps lead the group. Sarah is right above Jennifer in teh black shirt and Adina is teh second from the left on the couch. They are the two girls that Jennifer spends most of her time with in this group. Continue to pray that God would be using this group to help them in their walks with Him and to build them up into laborers for His kingdom for the lost world.

DG Conference

This past weekend we attended the Desiring God National Conference. John Piper, Tim Keller, Voddie Baucham, Mark Driscoll, and other spoke about the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern world. It was centered around that idea that is talked about in David Wells' book Above All Earthly Powers: Supremacy of God in a Postmodern World. You can go to www.desiringgod.org to hear the talks from the weekend. We highly recommend this. It was also a fun weekend becasue we had over 100 Campus Outreach staff in town for the conference. We got to connect with some of our friends from Greenville who came up for the conference. The picture is of all of us at a barbeque Friday afernoon. We had Jamie, Frances and Lucy Lightcap (friends from COG) stay with us for 4 nights. It was just so good for us to hang out and reconnect with them and hear about how things are going with Campus Outreach Greenville. Anyway, just wanted to share this picture and tell you to check out some of the speakers from the conference

Cookout

Above and Below are pictures from our cookout we had before the Northwestern vs. Augsburg College football game today. The Eagles (NW) pulled out the victory depite being big underdogs. This was a fun game especially since we have staff working at Augsburg as well. The cookout was a big success. We had close to 70 or 80 students come. We met lots of new people. Charlie is real excited that he got to meet some guys from the soccer team here. Hopefully those relationships will develop into more over the course of the year. There is also a guy named Aaron that Charlie met that is coming to church with us tomorrow. Please pray for more relationships to be developed.

Minnesota State Fair

Last Wednesday afternoon, we headed out to the ever-popular Minnesota State Fair. It is the biggest state fair in the country. It lasts for two and half weeks and ends on Labor Day. Three days after it ends, they begin planning for next year. It is most famous for its food. They had fried everything and every kind of food you could want on a stick (spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, and even deep fired candy bars). They are also famous for their fried cheese curds, which is fat from cheese deep fried. Charlie probably would have died instantly if he had eaten one because his choleserol would have risen to 800. All in all it was a good experience, our favorite part was the animal section (especially the Miracle of birth). This area is full of pigs, sheep, cows, and chickens that are about to give birth or recently have. We saw a sheep that had been alive for less than an hour when we got there. It was pretty cool. If you know how much Jennifer loves animals, you can imagine how much she enjoyed seeing this part of the fair. One of our other favorite parts was the swine barn where people from around the country bring their pigs to be auctioned off. We saw about 20 pigs bought in the course of 15 minutes. We also saw the state's biggest hog. Corn Dog (pictured below) weighed in this year at 1050 pounds. We dont even know how it got to the fair. So if you are ever in the area around the end of August, please stop by the fair and pay Corn Dog a visit. The other pictures are of a baby lamb (top), piglets (below Corn Dog) and the biggest pumpkin (813 pounds).

Pastor John on Communion

We heard a great sermon a couple of weeks ago by our pastor, John Piper. He spoke on Communion and why and how we celebrate the Lord's Supper. We thought that some of you would like to listen to it, so here is a link to the site. You can go here and then click on the sermon title. It should be the first or second on the list. We hope that this will make your celebration of the Lord's Supper one of depe communion with Christ Click here to get to the page

Soccer

I (Charlie) feel like I should give you guys an update on our Sunday afternoon soccer league. We have played about 3 or 4 games so far. Our team has scored a total of 13 goals. The funny thing about that is that my friend Matt Reagan and I have scored 11 of them. We don't think that our team had much offense before we showed up. Anyway, we start the playoffs this coming Sunday, so I will keep you updated on what happens.

Boundary Waters Trip

We have just returned from Voyageurs Natioinal Park with our staff team (pictured above). It was four nights spent in the middle of nowhere. We were 4 1/2 hours drive plus 45 min speed boat ride away from the cities. We stayed on land that is owned by the family of a student at the U of M. It is on the border of US and Canada; we actually stepped on Canadian land once. We fished, jumped off a cliff, played Mafia (a game), relaxed, and spent time building relationships with our other team members. It was a lot of fun for us and was real confirming that the Lord has called us to be a part of this team here in Minneapolis. Our fishing was mostly unsuccessful. Charlie hooked 2 Norhtern Pikes, but both broke the line and got away. Jennifer had a few bites; that was about all. The stars up there were amazing; it makes you realize how amazing God's promise to Abraham was (that he would make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky). We also think that we saw some bald eagles flying around. We also had some time to talk with our campus director about the plan for this year at Northwestern. Please keep praying for us as we begin to think for new relationships with students for the upcoming year. Enjoy these pictures. One is a sunset and one is of us right outside of the tent we stayed in for the week.

Larry!

We had dinner Wednesday night with our across the hall neighbor, Larry. He brought his girlfriend, Vicki, over for some fajitas. Jennifer cooked for us and made some great dessert. It was fun for us to get to know them better. We had many opportunities to share with them what our life is about. We talked about how Christ had changed our lives and got to share some of what we believe about God. We really just enjoyed their company a lot and hope to continue that relationship for as long as we (or he) live here. We also found out that Larry likes to play tennis and they both like boche ball, so we have many more things that we will be able to do with them. Please pray for more opportunities to interact with them and share with them what we believe about the Lord.

Metrodome

We took our first trip to the Metrodome Friday night. We saw the Twins play the Tigers. It was a good game; it went to extra innings, but the Twins lost. Francisco Liriano struck out 12 guys in 8 innings. There is no doubt in our minds that he should win the Cy Young. The Twins will never take the place of the Braves as our favorite team, but they were definitely fun to cheer for. It was cool to go to a game where the fans actually watched and cared about the game (unlike the fans at Turner Field). It was also weird to watch a baseball game played indoors.

Soccer

Yesterday, I (Charlie) went out to play soccer with Matt Reagan, another guy on staff. We thought we were just going to get a pick up game going. As it turns out, there is a league that plays every Sunday afternoon that consists of students from the U of M. The team that was playing were short on players, so they asked us to play. So we are now playing on this team that plays every week. It is cool because most of the players on the team are from all over the world. So please pray that God would open doors through conversations on this team. A few guys names are Ali (Venezuela), Pedro (Honduras), Preshung (India), and Almaz (Kazakhstan). We really do want to see the Gospel go forth on this team, so please join us in praying for them.

Moved In

We are officially moved in to our new apartment. We love it here so far, and it is slowly becoming to feel like home. Charlie had his first day of work in the office last week. He spent the time processing new support for the whole ministry. Next week will be spent learning how to make changes to our ministry's web site. Jennifer has been running errands, getting some new things for the apartment, and just making sure that we are settled in. Our nights have been spent either at events for the students or watching episodes of 24 on DVD (Thanks, Brendan!). Here are some pictures of the place. As Jennifer said, "personally i think they should see it in person, but if they must we can post them on the blog."

This is a picture of the view from our apartment.
The rest are as follows: the guestroom, den, our bedroom, the kitchen, and then the den again. Feel free to come and visit us any time.

Wedding Pictures

It's official; our wedding pictures are ready online. You can see and order pictures just like this one online. You can go to www.pictage.com and view them. All you need to do is create a username, search for our pictures (something like "Jennifer Cline & Charlie Brooks"), and enter the event key, which is "greenville." You can order them online or just look at them. Hope you have some time because there are over 1200. Enjoy!

Good Support news

Well, we have some good news to report. The Lord has really been faithful to your prayers and has made up the support that we lost. We recently went to atlanta, and the Lord provided over $600/ per month of support. We are so thankful for the Lord showing his faithfulness to us in this way. We are now at 84%, meaning that we have $900/ month left to raise. Continue praying that He will provide. We have a few meetings lined up this week and hopefully some more in Atlanta over the next 2 weeks. We just wanted you guys to get to share in our joy. We are projecting to be able to move by the end of July.

Myrtle Beach

We have just returned from a trip down to Myrtle Beach. We spent one night there. We got to see some of the people that we worked with at Campus Outreach Greenville for the last time before we head up north. It was hard to say goodbye to them because we have developed such good friendships with them. We also got to spend some time down at Minnesota's Summer Beach Project. We ate dinner with students from Northwestern, and we also attended the talk on relationships. It was good to begin to get a feel for what students at Northwestern are like. Our time was short, but very enjoyable and we look forward to many more interactions with those students in the future. The picture is of the Greenville staff guys at breakfast when we were in Myrtle.

The Honeymoon

Our honeymoon was lots of fun!! We went to the Turks and Caicos Islands (it is in the Caribbean) for 7 nights. We went snorkeling, went out to dinner, and straight chilled on the beach. The dinners were some of our favorite parts because all the restaurants were in cool, outdoor settings. We also saw lots of cool fish during our time snorkeling. The week was perfect for getting our marriage off to a good start. We really feel like we were able to develop a good friendship with one another. We are extremely excited about what God is going to do through our marriage both personally and in ministering to others. The above picture was taken on a cruise in the Turks and Caicos

We're Married

This is our first post. We are officially married and are curently in the process of adjusting to life together and raising support, so that we can move to Minneapolis. Here is a picture from the wedding: