Category Archives: College – UW Stout

Sermon: The Unexpected Journey

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This last Thursday I had the opportunity to speak at the first weekly meeting of UW – Stouts’ Campus Crusade. It was a lot of fun to get back to Stout and see a bunch of familiar faces, and even more new faces. With everything that has been going on there, I was overwhelmed to see 171 students pack out the lecture hall they were meeting in.

The message I gave was an adaptation of one that i prepared for a preaching competition over at Bethel Seminary. So it was the second time giving the message, and much improved over the first time. If you have a half hour check it out, and please leave me your thoughts and feedback!

Be blessed!

Graduation is almost here

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Today Jordan and I picked up our cap and gowns from the book store (cost us $50+! but they seem nicer than the plastic high school ones) and got our graduation tickets from the service desk.

My list of tasks  to complete before the end of the term is shrinking as well, slowly but surely. From an original 20 items as of last Sunday down to 15 right now. This leaves me with

  • Four Papers
  • Two Quizzes
  • Two Exams (only one finals week!)
  • Some flash grammar tutorials
  • Some web code
  • one set of online discussion participation

Thats it!

My application is also now complete over at Bethel Seminary. I should be hearing back this week from the sounds of it so I’ll be sure to post up here when I hear back!!

God Bless,
~paul

Bittersweet Goodbyes

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So the year is over, I?m at home and it?s been quite the while since I?ve updated this blog of mine. Trust me I?ll get better at updating this now that I?m back into somewhat of a concrete schedule. It?s a but surreal to be home though, to be gone from stout knowing that I won?t be back there anytime soon. Granted I will be able to see a bunch of my friends from school at some of the weddings this summer, but I won?t be able to come back this fall and live ministry with them again.

To be on the cusp of something so large, a year of living in Europe, that my mind can?t wrap around it is difficult. Leaving everything and everyone I know for this apartment in the heart of Toulouse, with three guys I kind of know, for people I?ve never met. If it wasn?t the Lord calling me to this I could never make it. It?s been so hard to say goodbye to people I know, to friends I?ve grown to love more then I thought love could mean. To realize that there are so many people I won?t get to see again before they graduate (and some that I may not see again because of that, on this side of the gates anyway). Derek and MM are two people who I?m going to miss so much. If they knew it or not they have helped mold me and inspire me to become so much more then I ever thought the Lord desired me to be. I pray only the best for you next year.

Then my class at stout (juniors!!), the brothers and sisters who I?ve known since my freshman year that I will leave for a year, it?s surreal to be gone from them and the love and support they?ve been for me. So many times you have been there for me to pick me back up or to put me back into my place. I never knew how much God would give those who loved Him above all before I was blessed to meet all of you. My crazy hot chocolate and tea party gang were awesome. Hopefully one of you keeps it going next year while I?m gone and you?re able to keep serving one another without expectation of anything in return.

Ah Jordan, you?re more then I ever deserve and ever imagined. You?ll be my friend waiting at the door for my return, who did not sit idol in my absence. Sweet heart how excited I am to see you on that day in July when we meet again. To see the marks God has made, blending His life into yours and our lives together. May God be generous enough to align our paths and to let me live life without someone like you rather than alone with Christ. Strive onward p.s.

Then there is the family. It?s been weird to live here and realize how little I know them. My heart is so burdened for not getting to know Ryan better, he?s so awesome from what I do know. I?m gonna miss all of you this summer, kyle you better tell me stories from Penn State, and mom and dad gotta let me know whats going on in your lives as well. I feel so blessed to have the summer to spend with the three of you before I leave for the year.

This is so weird, it?s weird to see how blessed I have been and to have never noticed it until it is time to take leave from it for a year. I pray that you all will radiate more when we meet again, that Christs light and refining power would be evident in every motion of your hearts. I can?t wait to meet those of you I?ve only begun to know, learn from, love, and serve.

Till I write again, let Christ change your life again,
~paul

Broken Day

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It?s a constant awe to me how the Lord teaches us and stretches us. In those times when we feel as though we?re walking with God and then in a day everything changes and we?re thrown on our head. As though we finally looked to our left and saw how far God was from us and looked down to see the things standing in our way. Those things un-prayed for, things we?ve taken on or have been set on us that weigh us down, and the distractions of life.

These times are when we look at our broken bodies and realize how little we can really do. It?s been a very hard day today because I?m seeing how my reliance has shifted, over the course of a couple days, from on the Lord unto myself. The hardest part about it is to see how easily it happened. This just goes to show me the importance of persistence and obedience in my walk with the Lord.

My schedule has gotten so busy lately, RA is becoming a lot of work (I?ve been on duty five out of the last six days), starting to build up my ministry team for STINT, course work, stepping out of Crusade at Stout, trying to find time to talk to everyone I need to or want to before the year is over. I had originally thought that I would be able to spend the first week of the next semester here before flying to France, but now that isn?t possible (we have a conference we leave from in the latter part of August).

Similar things are happening as when I first took over the evangelism team, or was preparing to leave for France the last time. I tend to get stressed out looking at everything that needs to get checked off the list before it can happen, and not even doubting that it will, just seeing the length of the journey can make me feel more distant from God. In all reality it is times like this where He will become more real to me then he?s ever been. It would be the best to describe this spot as waiting, I?m between being here and being there. Perhaps between isn?t the right word, maybe both works better. Physically I?m here and needing to be diligent with my responsibilities at Stout, and at the same time my mind is running through the summer and into France.

Keep seeking the Lord for your brokenness,
~paul

Another Update!

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So I’ve been slacking major on the updating of this journal but it will get better, because I’m starting to realize how much I’m suppressing my processing of whats going on in my life. This blog helps me do that. Random stuff; I won a free whole pie at baker square today in my SRVM 110 course because I knew French silk was the most popular pie they sell. So libby and me are going to try to hit that up when we’re both home this weekend (though she’s going home tomorrow). I’ve been doing a lot of conflict resolution this week, so it’s been a lot of fun? I’m starting to tell when I’m stressed out and it’s a lot more often then I realized. It’s just that I never get any real side affects because of it.

Jordan is still sick, she got a much nastier bug then I got. My cold last week was just a sore throat and weird feeling head, she’s got some stomach bug that’s really got her feeling down and worn out. So if you could be praying for her that’d be awesome.

Last night we brainstormed up outreaches for this next quarter, some of them are stinking awesome. I’m constantly in awe of what this team can come up with, and so grateful for all of them because they have some amazing ideas to contribute. Needless to say I think we are all excited to see what Christ is going to do on this campus through our outreaches. I’ll let you know more as we get more planned out.

As for me, I am strangly not busy. I think I’m just making time for reading my new book and it should be pretty interesting. It’s called ‘the prophets’ and is written by this brilliant jewish scholar, Abraham Heschel. I’m finishing up the introduction and really enjoying his insight, it’s a breath of fresh air from all the evangelism books I’ve been reading lately (7 or 8 of them).

I’m looking forward to heading home this weekend and possibly skiing on Saturday. Just realized today that I could probably get to hyland for a couple runs. Pretty excited about that. Going to the variety show with my mom Friday night to watch the little bro. I duno I’m just pretty excited in general to get away from stout for a while. Will be the only time this quarter that I’m going to get home.

Thursday I’m going to have a little phone interview for my STINT application. Basically just talking and going over some personal information that I have a hard time explaining in writing. Which is hard because my RA application is due by tomorrow so I will probably just turn that in and when I hear about STINT email ann marie and tell her if I still can or not.

Also lately I’ve been feeling like revitalizing Midwest Skier and turning it into an online magazine style website. I think it could be a really awesome idea, posted something on there and will see if anyone is willing to help out with it. I’m hoping this goes over well, it would be fun to kick it up, recast the vision, and see how the site does in their hands. Would be quite the test of my ability to manage properly, and to be able to give something like this back to the Midwest after all they’ve done for me would be awesome.

I’m sure there is more, I’m going to try to write more often and not wait to have these epic entries all the time. God bless ya,
~paul

Moments in Eternity…

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I wish I could have written more this past week but my hectic schedule didn’t allow for much of anything aside from ministry, class, and work as an RA. We, as campus crusade, had outreaches on Monday through Thursday and they went so well. Monday we had a spiritual interest panel with 5 professors from Stout talking about their beliefs. It went over fairly well though attendance was a problem (was all week). Tuesday night we showed Waking Life in applied arts 210 (mmmmm big screen) and it was a lot of fun. Slightly larger crowd and that movie just really gets you thinking about everything.

The group I was a part of led the outreach on Wednesday where we put together the invitations we handed out and used as a tool to get people to come on Thursday. We put together 500 bags of random school supplies with a quarter sheet invite to our outreach. We had around thirty people to hand them out and it went pretty well. We hit up pretty much every dorm that night and nearly all of them had been turned out by the next day.

Thursday was here and that meant Moments in Eternity. The outreach ran really well and I was in awe of how well the sub-team system worked out. Currently am in the process of figuring out what that makes my job as the evangelism team leader. We had a low turn out for the outreach but the efforts of those involved in running the outreach were so blessed. It went very well, the testimonies worked awesome together and the drama was mind blowing. I might put that up here once I get a chance to mix it a bit.

This leads me to my next point, what happened last week. I’m still processing it to be honest but this is where I’m at right now. God blessed us in how things ran. The week happened with almost no incident and it’s such a blessing to know that. So why, if each outreach ran so smoothly, were there so few people there and so (relatively few in comparison to last semester) few relationships started with the Lord. Where is our movement at that we could only handle seven? The bible tells us that the Lord gives us no more then we can handle, so why as a movement of over 200 students can we only handle seven.

A few thoughts from my corner. Sujo John was an amazing outreach that we dropped the ball on. We were collectively trusted with so much and we dropped the ball, just as we did after the Passion of the Christ outreach. The overflow of cards overwhelmed the system we had in place and it was never replaced or modified. There were people who weren’t met up with until the end of the semester, nearly 9-10 weeks later. The moment you accept Christ you take the side of light and there is nothing that upsets Satan more then when Christ wins over another heart. The best thing Satan can do at that point is demoralize and cause that person to become idol and ineffective in their faith. When we as a movement can?t reach out them and immerse them quickly in scripture and truth, equipping them to battle against the darkness that desires to so quickly consume them, we have lost the battle we are truly fighting. The battle to raise up warriors (aka laborers).

Now I’m not passing the blame, there is more I could be doing and I’m starting to do more. There are two more guys I want to start discipling this week, I want to spend more time with the people from my team and raise them up to be leaders that have the characteristics of Christ that they are destined to have if they only knew. Here is the bottom line, it’s not what we are doing that is going wrong, it’s that we aren’t allowing ourselves to become the people we must be. If we would just stop buying into the mediocre Christianity that the rest of the world has and would actually see how powerful passages like Romans 8:29-30 really are. To live out the promises of God in their life because they are able to embrace what it means to be called, to be Christian. I’m tired of seeing people pass up everything, for what their minds can grasp. Father be with my hands and in my words in my last months here. I see it now and my cry is that it not be past the hour I should have seen.

God bless us again with your strength and understanding,
(not worthy to put my name)

31 Jours! et plus!!

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Ok so by now it’s more like thirty-one and a half days, and I’m still stinkin excited about it. I know I haven’t written much about Jordan but she truly is an amazing women of God. While the first three weeks or so were spent several hours apart now that were here and able to see each other it?s becoming more real.

I’m not sure that I would say it is real yet. There are still times that I don’t remember, or if I do it still feels a bit surreal. Even though I can hold her in my arms and joke around with her it still feels weird. It’s just that I’ve never dated someone who understood me so well. That she knows when I’m having a hard day and seems to just help me push forward. She gets what I do and when girls I have dated before would have gotten upset she is there waiting for me, understanding what I’m doing. Don’t have a clue what I ever did to deserve someone like her, but she is someone I will defiantly love having around and getting to know better.

In other news this is what I’ve been up to: RA Training, Servant Team (ccc), Testimony Training (ccc), Date Night w/ Jordan, Peer Review Board, All Hall Event (ra), and finished my book (Three Battlegrounds). In the next couple days this is what is going on: giving my speech, Catalytic Conference, Talking at the Catalytic Conference, Sophomore Class dinner, servant team, spiritual interest panel outreach, movie outreach, invite outreach, moments in eternity outreach, and then finally rest! Oh yea, there is that school thing too.

Keep letting God bless ya!
~paul

It’s finally Done!

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As much fun as RA training was, I’m so glad it is finally over. The first three days were a lot of fun because they were smaller settings. There are only 17 new RA?s for this semester and so it was fairly personal. I really enjoyed being able to joke around and make the time go quicker (at least for me anyway). It was sweet that they took us out to eat. Turns out that it was cheaper to take us out to eat for three meals a day for the first three days then to open the commons. Now I’m not going to complain about eating perkins, china buffet, el patio, quiznos, jeff n’ jims, culvers, and the depot. Though the depot has very poor service and all my mad skills got me to dump my pop all over the place at quiznos (missing everyone and not hitting any food). It was more or less a bunch of eating mixed in with a bunch of sitting. Nothing really revelation came out of training, more or less just a refreshing of what I already knew.

It’s now Sunday afternoon and the residents are starting to move in. I don’t know what to expect but it should be a good semester. We went through and did our duty schedule yesterday, I work every other Tuesday, and six/seven weekends of the semester. I?m a little overwhelmed by all the weekends I need to be working near the end of the semester, kind of bummed because it would be nice to be able to spend some time with Jordan then before we part ways for the summer. I am probably going to have to move some around though because of spring retreat. I’ll worry about that once we have a date for the retreat.

In other news yesterday was far to long. Started at 7:30, training from 8ish until 11, paperwork from 11 until noon, off to the All Day meeting w/ Cru from noon until 7, and then from 7 until 2 I was doing more RA stuff (door decks, Bulletin Board, Sorting Forms). I don?t think I should have another day like that in a long time. So many meetings and so much time spent.

To be honest it’s quite surreal to be here as an RA knowing that nine months from now I’ll be living in Europe. So weird. I love it though, God is so amazing and I can’t wait to see what He desires to do here in this dorm. Time to sit here bored out of my mind. 122 Hovlid!

Keep letting God bless ya!
~paul

New Address:
Paul Prins
122 Hovlid
121 Third Ave W
Menomonie, WI 54751

Phone: 232-1087

Gotta Love Life!

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TCX was amazing, not that the speakers were so spectacular? but just that I had been ready to learn something new and they provided that for me. I learned more about how I approach God, knowing that I want to weep before Him more often, that the news I hear would sometimes draw raw emotion from me. Another is that I would stand in awe of God more often, just praising his attributes and helping myself remember who is who and how amazing it is that I can talk with my Father as openly as we can. I?m just in such awe of that.

Other then the spiritual side of things, TCX was a great time to just chill with friends and enjoy downtown. I was also able to get my foot caught in the revolving door of the Hilton? The carpet slipped as I was jumping into the quick spinning door to head to mens time and next thing I knew my foot was jammed between the door and the glass wall. 45 minutes later the firemen had gotten me out (after a failed attempt with the jaws of life) by breaking through the safety glass with an axe. The only damage was a bruised foot with a good scratch on the top and an out of order door. So exciting I know!

The conference was awesome though, 1300+ other college students from all over the upper Midwest (ND, SD, IA, MN, WI and some of NE), amazing praise time, and great fellowship with tons of people. My roomie came over for a couple days afterwards that was fun. I actually just got back from going to Wausau that was really sweet. I hung out with Chris for the morning and saw most of the exciting parts of town, including the plane at the VFW!

After meetings the neighbors dog I went over and figured out where Jordan lived thanks to some excellent phone navigating. We hit up some dinner, el something, and afterwards went to this really cool coffee shop, somethings brewing, downtown. I love spending time with her, we just seem to understand each other and get along so well. Spend most of the time laughing or just joking around with a couple serious conversations mixed in there. To get to the point, I’m super excited to say that we’re dating. It’s a little hard to know right now that there will be over a year where we aren’t able to see each other, but we both decided that we still wanted to start now. I’m just really excited! It’s this weird excitement, I have this relaxed calm exterior while my insides just keep smiling and bouncing around.

Well I’ve gotta get some rest, have to play catch up most of the week with my writting stuff.

Praising the Lord for His blessings,
~paul

TCX + New Years

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I?m getting ready to leave for TCX and I?m super excited for it. Just being able to see my stout friends outside of their normal school mode, get to know them better and really grow in Christ with them. I?m so ready for this, late nights with no sleep, early mornings and quiet times that are so tempting to sleep through. Not to mention rockin in the new year with over 3000 college students worshiping God in massive dance party style!!

There really isn?t a ton to be writing here, I?m busy working on some other stuff and might post a part of it once I?m closer to being finished with it. This will be my last post for some time though. After TCX (which goes through the new year) my roomie is going to be coming over for a couple days, then I?m going to head to Wausau to hang out there for a while (not sure how long) and see Chris, Jacalyn, Ben and Jordan. It will be good times out there.

Otherwise there isn?t a lot going on in the life of Paul. Praying away some feelings to see if they are true or not. It would be so amazing if they were but alas I?m not the best with these things, and it would be a while regardless. Sometimes it seems like I want so much of God. But ?You do not have, because you do not ask God? james 4:2b.

I?ll write more deep things once the new year rolls around, and you can be sure that I?ll be keeping track of what happens at TCX and there will be a ton of photos.

Dancing in the hands of the Highest Priest,
~paul