It's that time again..NSO..and Urbana09

Ah, it's been forever since I've posted. Maybe even a year.

This summer we've been working hard to keep projects rolling, and for a while I was the only graphic designer on hand! My fellow graphic designer, Gary, was away taking care of his mother for much of the summer, they thought she would pass away, but she is actually now doing better, though still declining. So I was filling all the individual staff orders, and finishing up our promo kits so staff could order them for the new student outreach going on now. Pray for open hearts and minds of the students coming on campus and meeting our intervarsity students, and maybe even hearing about jesus for the first time! Pray for the readiness of our students to share the gospel and reach out to freshmen looking to make new friendships. And pray for our staff as they support the students, really working almost 24/7 in some cases, in little things that make huge differences in students' lives: remembering name of the 50th person they've met that day, rushing to get more lemonade for the activities fair table, staying up till 2 am to play games until even students go to bed.

Meanwhile, I'm in the office devising the next big thing, and in this case its been several, including another fraternity and sorority student conference, nurse's Christian fellowship materials and a alumni fundraiser in San Diego. The biggest project has been, however, Urbana09. yes, we're already working on themes and materials for out triennial student missions conference in December 2009! I've designed the logo and look, the website and proposed a promotional campaign, along with the communications director, that has just been approved by the Urbana leadership team. We are already excited to share John 1-5 and a call to missional living with students. We hope the campaign will include Urbana alumni who are now serving all over the world with different missions agencies, because they connected with their current mission field and agency at Urbana. I'm excited to meet those people myself, in part because I am one- I found 2100 at Urbana.

While we're moving ahead on all these projects, the going will be slower for a little while here, but for a good reason, our print rep, Jill, is out for a month getting married and honeymooning. So please pray for us while Gary and I do twice the work we normally do (Jill definitely does the job of 2 people!) as we coordinate and design projects, dealing with all parties start to finish. We designers aren't the most organized when it comes to the non-visuals, so we'll need super-natural multi-tasking capabilities while Jill is away.

Now I'm off to attend a wedding this weekend in New York (Geraldine's!), just for 36 hours, and meet with a few friends while I'm there.