Meeting the Lord in Household Life

Andrea DeLee, Junior at IUPUI

by Andrea DeLee

                  On the first day of classes, sophomore year, I was sitting in IUPUI’s largest lecture hall surrounded by over 400 students waiting for an Inorganic Chemistry lecture to begin. At the time, I was living in the IUPUI campus apartments and was an extended member of the women’s household in the Triangle. As I waited, I noticed someone I had met several years ago waving at me from across the room. Despite the large class, she managed to pick me out of the crowd and I motioned for her to sit by me. We exchanged a few words and class began. The minute class ended, she immediately asked if we could talk longer. I invited her to come over to my apartment and she willingly accepted the invitation. While we walked toward the apartments, she told me about several exceedingly challenging situations in her life including faith crises, difficult relationships, a less than ideal living situation, and battles with previous addictions. As she talked, we entered my empty apartment, (my one roommate had classes all day) and I offered her a late breakfast. “Do you want one or two eggs?” I asked. “Two please!” she said quickly. I scrambled the eggs and put them on a plate, thinking we would sit down together at my kitchen table to continue the conversation. “Where do you keep your forks?” she asked in a hurried manner. I handed her a fork and she proceeded to rapidly eat the eggs right off the plate on my kitchen counter. “Do you want toast and cantaloupe to go with your eggs?” I asked, realizing how hungry she was.  Two pieces of toast, several slices of cantaloupe, and an hour of conversation later, I asked if I could pray with her. She agreed and I prayed with her begging Lord to move in power in all areas of her life.  After the prayer, with a word of thanks, she headed on her way and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.

                  Fast forward one year, I was in my first Physiology lab at the start of my junior year. At this point, I had been living in household in the Triangle for several months. As I found my seat in the front row of the lab, I met my Physiology lab partner, Sharon. Throughout the course of working together, I shared my life in household and in the People of Praise with her. I told her about my friendships with each of my incredible sisters in household. I invited her over for dinner on numerous occasions, but due to scheduling conflicts, she wasn’t able to accept any of my invitations until a month and a half after the end of that semester.

The planned day for Sharon to join our household for dinner arrived. That day, due to a lengthy and challenging meeting with an advisor, I found myself still on campus at 6:30pm, 15 minutes past the start of our dinner! I rushed home and sheepishly walked in the door. To my delight, I found Sharon sitting at our table, eating, laughing, and having a great conversation with the rest of my household, the majority of whom she had never seen before! My household had welcomed her and made her feel right at home. That night, Sharon met the Lord in all of the women in my household. After dinner, she asked for a tour of our house. As we walked through each room, Sharon was amazed by how each clean and organized area was suited to putting our studies and free time in common. During that tour, Sharon met the Lord in the order of each of the spaces in our home. Sharon and I continue to stay in contact to this day.

While living in the apartments on campus, I kept asking the Lord for more. Lord, how can I more fully share your love with the women I meet on campus? In a word, my prayer has been answered through household life. The Lord’s great love for the world is revealed in our real friendships, our ordered homes, and the freedom and purpose we share in Christ. Christian community lived out in our People of Praise households creates an environment for meeting the Lord face to face. Thank you Father for life in household!

Visitors Welcome

This past weekend the Triangle welcomed the DeLee family from South Bend and four sisters from the NOVA branch.  All together we seated 36 for Lord's Day dinner - a record number for us.

It is a real blessing for us to host our guests.  We enjoyed getting to know them.  We also had a lot of fun after dinner playing what turned out to be a fairly large-scale game of password.

Our college curious guests visited IUPUI and Marian University here in the city and had an opportunity to share a bit of campus household life.  Great fun.

Trish Brewer, Mrika Kadeli, Barbara Brophy, Nadia Fraga, Rachel Osterhouse and Alanna Crimmins 

Thaw...

O thank the Lord the ice that has been here since the ice storm a few weeks ago is finally melting.  The forecast calls for a week of above freezing temps and even for a day in the 60's.  That really helps!

The weather lifted the mood at this week's Lord's Day and it was an especially good time to be together.

So, here's where we are at this point in the semester:

-  Most students have had their first test of the semester.  The challenges have been identified and plans are being put it place to get things moving in the right direction.  We have four full weeks before the spring break.  Time to get busy.

-  We just settled on the dates for Action Summer (details will be out shortly).

-  We're planning a high school young men's retreat here in Indy for the weekend of 25 - 27 March.  (More details shortly but save those dates guys.  It's going to be good.)

-  We instituted lunch groups to meet on campus three days a week to share life and to provide another opportunity to share our studies and to invite people to meet our housemates.

-  We're expecting a huge Lord's Day next week with people in town to visit the Triangle from South Bend and from NOVA.

-  We just welcomed the newest member to the Triangle Campus work - Katie Anne Havard.  Katie attends IUPUI and lives in the dorms.  She plans to join us in household in the Fall.  Welcome Katie.

Praying a welcome prayer over Katie Anne at Lord's Day

- In our prayer so far this semester, we've been hearing a couple of themes over and over:

          Be a light in the darkness.

          We've heard the words of Jesus in Matthew 9, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick."  Don't label anyone a lost cause.  Everyone is just one decision away from coming to the Lord.

Lord bless our efforts to be your light.  We're ready to host you if you'd like to visit the Triangle.  Spring is coming and we'd love to see you here.

Have a great week.

walt

Snow Day #2

First a light, misty rain and then the temps fell.  Everything is encased in ice.  IUPUI is off for a second day but we did manage to have our team dinner and meeting last night.

We've been talking about household living in the university setting.  John Henry Newman once said, "It is scarcely too much to say that one-half of the education that young people receive is derived from the tradition of the place of education."   Newman, in his many writings on founding a university, recognized the importance of household living as integral to the education of young people.  He recommended that, "small communities must be set up within its [the university] precincts, where his [the student's] better thoughts will find countenance, his good resolutions support; where his waywardness will be restrained, his heedlessness forewarned, and his prospective deviations anticipated."

To modern ears Newman may sound overly paternalistic but he didn't recommend the continuation of authoritarian style rule of the high school years.  He wanted to establish a healthy educational environment that would help students excel in their studies and grow as followers of Christ.  The suggestion of some balance between liberty and restraint strikes some prospective students as just what they want to avoid but we're finding that this balance brings out the best in each other.

We have four goals for our life in the Campus Household that steer our decisions from day-to-day:

1.  Learn what the Lord has for us to learn.  We're serious about our studies.  The Lord has drawn us together and he's interested in our education.  We're not looking for easy A's but to gain the knowledge we need to work with the Lord on his plan.

2.  Put our studies in common.  We aim to share what we're learning.  We have a variety of majors present and together we're learning about them and taking the time to share about what we're excited to learn.

3.  Grow in our People of Praise life.  We have the treasure of community life and all that encompasses including our shared teachings that years of wisdom and God's grace has handed on to us.

4.  Grow in brotherhood and sisterhood.  College years cement lifelong friendships and we're committed to each other's growth and development as men and women of Christ.  We're learning to love each other and that means great times shared in joy.

There are other ways to do college, I'm sure, but we're blessed to be here and thank God for the opportunity.  It's good to be together here.  If you'd like to visit, let us know.  We'd love to see you here.

walt