Septembers are always a rush (a good one!) Class is fully back in session, student leaders are kicking off the year with club fairs and other outreaches and the staff team is busy overseeing it all by God’s grace. As our update this month, I wanted to share with you a follow-up to the prayer requests from the August letter. So often we forget to look out for answered prayer, so I did not want to make that mistake.

Last month, our NJCU student president Christian asked us to pray for new leaders who would be “ready for action.” He was moving into the semester having lost several leaders who graduated, but by God’s grace and through your prayers, the Lord brought along FOUR other leaders (pictured above) who all have a passion to see Christ lifted high at their school! This really is incredible. Honestly I was anxious about NJCU not having the laborers it needed, but God sent them. We even have a connection to several faculty and staff who want to connect their students to the movement. Praise God!

Another praise is from MSU student president Khristine. She shared, “I also pray for the new NJCU’s Student Leaders students at MSU that their hearts may be opened and they may find Jesus on their journey at school.” As a reflection of this, the MSU movement is again having focused weekly evangelism every Thursday at 9:30 am. We of course want our students to simply live out a lifestyle of gospel sharing, but it will be so great to see what God does with this focused time.

And finally, another praise is from student president James from Ramapo. One of his prayer requests was for “boldness in campus evangelism.” By God’s grace, I think they received some motivation right from within their student body. On 9/14 at their school’s club and activities fair, an international student (who we’ll call “Jik” because he told me he prefers to remain anonymous) connected with us at our table and told his wild testimony. In August (back home in Shri-Lanka), after once again trying to find life in sin, he felt disappointed. Although Jik grew up in an atheistic Buddhist home, and was very much anti- Christian, he claims that during a dream, Jesus appeared to him and invited him into the family of God. Jik renounced his lifestyle and gave his life to Christ! Now back at Ramapo, he is connected to the movement and wants to grow. WOW, huh? This is same reaction our Ramapo student leaders and I had after hearing Jik’s story. It is so like Paul’s, it is sure to produce evangelistic boldness in the hearts of our movement leaders. Please pray for Jik, our student leaders and staff as we move full steam ahead proclaiming the good news of Jesus on our campuses!

Events

We wanted to take a moment and invite you all to “Jersey Cru,” our monthly statewide gathering held at Rutgers on 9/29 at 8pm. No pressure, but we know you’ll be blessed. Visit www.jerseymetro.com/jerseycru for more details. Also, if you know any college students, they can certainly join us at Jersey Cru, but please let them know about our fall retreat happening October 6-8. It’s going to be great! Visit www.m28retreat.com for more details. (FYI, if these don’t work and you wanted to see the “ministry in action,” I have posted some activities right on www.sforzagrams.com/meetups. No pressure of course. Just want to let you know!

P.S.

We finally moved! After months of delays and living with family or friends, we finally closed on our home on August 31st through the income-based, first-time homebuyer program we told you about. It was a really difficult wait, but God did it! We feel this was a great stewardship move for our future. Thank you so much for praying. Feel free to ask for our new address!

Warmly,

Joey & Jenn Sforza