Volume 3, Issue 2

Page 2

Called to Serve

ministry many UCOers have been a part of).
After 15 very full months of living household life, tutoring math and science, administrating a College Bound program, working on a summer work program, helping with retreats, leading small groups, and co-leading household, I thought it would be fun to do UCO staff work . . . so I did my best to plant bugs in the ears of people I knew would be the ones to ask me to serve. However, after more prayer and time to think, I realized that God had other ways for me to serve him. This was not my time to be on staff (yet). It was, however, my time to serve God through study, being a Christian at work, and just by doing the small things He asked of me. Even though I was not officially on staff, I still played a role in UCO

Where did this desire I have to serve start? I often ask myself this question. The summer after my junior year of High School I went on a mission trip to Trinidad with the Word of God Community. While I was there, I really felt like we were not doing enough service, it felt like a vacation. When I told this to one of the leaders she remarked that the others were complaining about too much service and felt like they needed more down time. She told me that God had given me a heart for service. 
After this mission trip, I wanted to serve more. Instead, I filled my life with school and gymnastics. After completing a very intense two years at Schoolcraft College and graduating with an associate's degree in Culinary Arts, I moved to Detroit to serve with Detroit Summer Outreach for fifteen months (a wonderful inner-city

life. I was on the worship team, helped lead a women's group, and went to staff training.
This summer has also been a time of rich service for me. Beyond working a full time job in the restaurant industry, I coordinated the regular UCO women's events - making time for the women of UCO to pray together, get some teaching, and just spend time together growing in relationship with one another and our Creator. Service has been such a blessing in my life up to now, and I am looking forward to being on UCO staff this fall.
-Sarah Flanagan
Sarah has made a whole hearted response to the Lord and his call to service in the body, particularly in UCO. It is a privilege to serve with her.

Prayer Requests

We need your help! Prayer does make a difference! We need you to pray for these things! Please intercede with us as you read these intentions and then continue to pray throughout the term as well. We want to cover the outreach in prayer:
1. Households: The women stay on at John Street for another year and need prayers for continued unity as sisters. The men have changed line-up from older to younger, and have moved from the Highlands to a house on Adams Street (near the stadium), where they'll need prayer for balance in the midst of being zealous and intense in setting their house goals. Pray that Christ will be made manifest among them all and that their houses become centers of UCO life.
2. Christians on Campus: We're seeing

more momentum than usual this year in the area of Christian unity on campus. Pray that momentum would continue, particularly in building relationships that last beyond single events, and for connections between fronts to form where there are various groups making similar but separate calls for unity. Pray that the Lord would somehow use what he has established in UCO to renew his Christian people-at-large in the areas of worship and way-of-life by enabling us to serve and to share these gifts.
3. Outreach: We'll take the first month to meet people in our courses and abroad, and then we'll invite them all to our Alpha Course. Pray the Lord would work powerfully and clearly bring to us those he wants in UCO, and that we would learn to love them as Christ

himself does.
4. The Lord's Guidance: Please ask the Lord about what we should be praying and looking for. We want to be open to new areas the Lord may want us to pray about, and to new areas to work in, without just assuming we're supposed to keep doing the same things. We need help in listening to Him. If you have a sense about an area we should focus on, please email it to me at blalond at umich dot edu.
Thank you for your continued prayer support. We have seen abundant fruit come from the intercession of our alumni.
-Brian LaLonde
UCO Co-Chapter Director

University Christian Outreach Alumni Association

716 Catherine Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1506
Phone: 734-994-3201

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