While most students were at home with family and friends during the Christmas break, over 250 Latino students from around the country gathered in Torrance between Christmas and New Year's for the 2nd triennial National La Fe student conference. Based on the three word - Embrace, Engage, Empower - the conference focused on ethnic identity, leadership development and campus and community outreach. In addition to the plenary sessions and small groups, students had opportunity to learn from a variety of seminars that were offered. Veronica & I had the honor of leading a seminar on relationships & dating, entitled, "He said, She said, God says." Both offerings of the seminar were packed out with between 50-100 students!!

Sometimes working with students involves late nights, long hours, hard work and sacrifice. And other times it means driving my van full of students up to the snow after the recent rains, or going out to karioke to celebrate a student's birthday, or counting the dunks my student, Chris, had in a recent basketball game. Chris is a transfer student from North Carolina who began coming to DEEP last quarter because he heard about something Christian on campus and jumped at the opportunity for community. He was tired of the constant parties in his apartment and didn't know how to really engage the other member's of his team with his faith.

Love & Influence is a training conference happening next weekend, Feb. 8th & 9th, and is designed to inspire and equip students to live their faith authentically on campus - with their friends, at their job, in their major. The goal of the conference is help students to become men and women who are intentional in loving and influencing the people in their lives. Please join us in praying for a group of 8-10 students from CSULA to join together with over 200 students from around Los Angeles for this training event.