In my last update, I shared about how our new student outreach was going. As we settle into the middle of the quarter, it is encouraging to see how deeper community is beginning to grow in this group of students. We are teaching from the gospel of Luke this quarter, and the students are really started to respond to God, not just by coming each week, but by taking in what they hear in a deeper way.

Here are a few things that students have said in response to our series through the first part of the gospel of Luke. One sophomore who has just started coming to DEEP shared how - "God really spoke to me when [after I had preached from Luke 3:21-22] Scott asked God that we would know who we are as God's beloved, because that's we we came to college for, to find ourselves." Or from one of our new students at CSULA - "Tonight's message has taught me to think about what everyone else says. I am the Lord's beloved child and I do not need to prove myself."

Or after last weeks message from Luke 5 about Jesus being the good doctor who wants to heal us, one of our student leaders, said, "God was telling me how much I really need to go to him for things, how I haven't been real with everything in my life." Another student shared about "wanting to cure the nasty inside of me, wanting to change and to heal my hurting and worries."

Praise God for how he is going deeper with students through the Word each week. Please continue to pray for us each Wednesday, that our time with students in fellowship at dinner and in the Word each week would continue to bring transformation and renewal!

Our annual Fall conference, at InterVarsity's Campus by the Sea on Catalina Island, is the center piece of our outreach efforts to new students and the turning point in the fall quarter. Not only does it provide students a key opportunity to step away from the rat-race of classes, papers, & mid-terms to get some rest, but it is a key time of going deeper in their relationship with Jesus and with each other.

Friday was the registration deadline for our trip this weekend, though we are hoping and praying for some late sign-ups. We've been praying for a group of 25-30 students from the core group & the new students that we've been meeting, serving, and pressing deeper over the first few month of this new school year to be able to join us for the weekend. Please join us in praying, both for students as they decide about going, but also for God to work powerfully during the weekend, deepening students in their love affair with Jesus and obedience to that love, as well as for students deepening their bonds with one another, that a deeper community would emerge when we return to campus.

When we started doing this event 5 years ago to serve Latino students around the Greater LA area, "we" was just Abner Ramos & I working together on the side, adding to our otherwise already full plates as campus staff, and our hopes were that a few students would come, maybe 30 or 40.

Now, serving with La Fe - InterVarsity's Latino student ministry - is a key part of our job description and "Cumbre" has become one of several things we are doing to reach and develop Latino students, and is now annual event drawing that we anticipate drawing in close to 200 students. Our La Fe ministry in Los Angeles was even recently featured in an article in this month's edition of El Inter, a widely circulating Spanish-language Christian newspaper.

Just like Moses could never have anticipated how his experience with God would change after the burning bush, I don't think either Abner nor I could have anticipated all that God would do when we first stepped out in leading the first Cumbre. Not that we've divided the sea yet, but God is doing a great thing through La Fe to impact Latino college students here in Los Angeles.

If you can make it, we'd love to have you join us on November 16th at Claremont McKenna College for this year's "Cumbre de Alabanza."

Thanks again for all of your prayers and support. Your partnership with me on campus is a precious gift.

Scott