Upper Room Pictures

Here are pictures of the Upper Room last Friday night. We met in the Campus Ministry room on campus and all ate our fill of pizza.

Fr. Joensen gave a talk about Mary and prayer. We were challenged to think of how our relationship with the Mother of God has developed and grown throughout the years. He shared how Mary is present with us throghout our lives, and especially at Mass when we remember Christ's passion.

Here are some pictures of the student leaders. Not all were able to come, and it's exciting how many new leaders there are!

Fr. Joensen has a deep and beautiful love for Mary which was evident when he talked about her!

We then had the students over to our apartment to hang out.

We played a few games, shared a lot of a laughs, and had a great night.

"Sowing Broadly"

Once a month we have an Upper Room with all the FOCUS student leaders. We use the time to come together as a group and recast the vision of what we are doing, as well as time to meditate and learn more about a specific topic.

Jason and Tyler recast the vision for the semester. Jason talked about "sowing broadly" and trying to share the person of Jesus Christ with as many people as we can!

Tyler explained how we are going to do this, and the FOCUS term is "bare-handed evangelization." This is where two student leaders will ask the Holy Spirit to guide them, and then go up to a fellow student and ask them a general question about faith, such as, "Why do you think some college students don't take their faith seriously?" Then as the conversation progresses, hopefully there will be a chance to narrow it down and ask them about their personal faith journey.

The goal of each conversation is to present the gospel message and to help each student, at least think about, a relationship with Jesus Christ. Tyler and his teammates have been going around with their disciples doing this for the past few weeks and so far they have had great responses (a few students are going to come to Bible studies because they were invited during the conversations.) We are all so excited about this and know God is going to continue to bless our efforts of evangelization!

Jason gave an amazing thought: if all the student leaders talk to two new students a week, by the end of the semester they will all have talked to 800 students, which is half the student-body population. Only God knows how He is going to touch the student's lives on campus, and we are privileged to be a part of His work!

FOCUS Team Dinner

Every Monday night we enjoy food and fellowship with our team. We take turns cooking and last Monday night was our turn. Tyler found a delicious Green Chili Enchilada recipe in our latest edition of Southern Living and put his cooking skills to good use. It turned out really well and we've been enjoying leftovers all week!

Here is the pear tart we had for desert. We went to the downtown Farmers Market last Saturday and got pears that I used to make jelly. We had a few left over so I googled recipes with pears and found a very simple pear crisp. Basically you mix the pears with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon juice. It was similar to an apple tart and was a fun fall dessert.

We always have the dinners at our team director's house because they have a little one who needs to go to bed at night. She always provides excellent entertainment and her sister is due in a few weeks so we're so excited to have another little one around!

Jason (team director) and his daughter Olivia are on the floor. Fr. Boone, who works closely with the FOCUS team and Campus Ministry at Loras, joined us for the night. Stacey is sitting next to Tyler (and our other teammate Kourtney and Jason's wife Kjersti aren't in the picture). We're really thankful for our team and always look forward to Monday night dinners.

A Wild Week

What a week this has been! God is ever faithful and has blessed us so much! We are very excited about all God is doing! This was the fourth week of classes and we're starting to get into a routine. We love the weekends because they are usually relaxing and time to regroup and get ready for the week ahead. Tyler is enjoying football (yesterday he asked me how we managed without football, in the "dry season", and I didn't have an answer for him) and I thought this would be a good time to blog about our wild week.

Tyler is really enjoying reaching out to the athletes. He talks of being a "ministry of presence" while going to practices and games. Even if he doesn't talk to the players, he is there and every week he touches base with the coaches and asks if he can help with anything. He is splitting up his time between football, soccer, cross country, and tennis and so far the coaches have been very open to having him around.

Before now I have only seen Tyler on a soccer field so I am enjoying watching him at football practices and games. It's quite a different atmosphere.
He has had breakfast and lunch with a few athletes and is planning on starting a cross country bible study in a few weeks.

Loras campus has started to show signs of fall. We are used to the fall in Florida, which isn't really fall at all. Whenever we'd see red leaves at Ave Maria we'd get excited, but also sad because it wasn't a real fall leaf. Here, the leaves are changing everywhere and it is beautiful.

One of the traditions at Loras is to have Wednesday night Mass at 9pm at the grotto outside.
Two weeks ago Tyler wore his black pea coat because it was chilly and after Mass during the announcements Father Joensen said we would keep having Mass outside as long as the weather cooperated, but that Tyler Rosser might not like it since he is a southerner and is cold. Since then, people have been coming up to him and telling him to brace for the winter. The next week, Tyler was making an announcement about a party at our place and he started off pointing to the leaves behind the grotto that were showing fall colors. He said he was from Alabama and was really enjoying the foliage. At the end of the announcements, the assistant pastor Father Boone pointed to the building across the way and said, "Look at the bricks...I'm from Iowa." Everyone laughed...maybe you had to be there, but it was funny. People in Iowa aren't really used to southerners but they are now!

On Fridays the missionaries and some students go to the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic downtown to pray. This was our first time and we prayed a Rosary and a Divine Mercy Chaplet. It is a great way to come together and stand up for life, as well as being a witness community. There were a few adults praying when we got there and they were very excited to learn about FOCUS and see so many students willing to pray in front of the clinic.

We ended the week with a bang. We hosted the Rosser's Rooftop Rendezvous. We love entertaining and having people over and this topped our list of the biggest party (even if it was our first) we have thrown. It was a great night.

Everyone started in our apartment with hot chocolate and then went up to the terrace.

We had fun with the food (the Rosser's like their food) and made party mix, caramel apples, and cheese dip.
Tyler's teammate Kourtney (on the right) with some students.

Tyler and his team director Jason (in the middle) with friend Tim.

We had our wedding dance playlist playing on my iPod and people were dancing (brought back great memories!) Overall it was a success and hopefully we can do it again in the spring.

Saturday Tradition

A tradition at Loras that we are really excited about is going to 8am Mass on Saturday mornings and eating brunch afterwards. We go to St. Mary's church across the river in East Dubuque, IL. It's about five minutes from our apartment and a very beautiful small church.

This is our second Saturday in a row hosting the brunch and Tyler and I are so thankful we have a kitchen where we can cook and a home into which we can welcome students! (Two things that were difficult when we were living in Florida.)

This morning six students and some of our teammates joined us so we had a total of 11 people. Tyler cooked 16 eggs and I made a triple batch of cherry walnut pancakes. It was quite the production and are already planning next week's menu.

FOCUS Visitors

One great thing about FOCUS is you get to know lots of awesome people. When I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I got to know Rebecca and Travis. They both were students at UNL who went on to become missionaries. (My sister Ashley was actually in Rebecca's bible study.) Currently Travis is the team director at the University of Illinois in Champaign (where we were for five weeks this summer for FOCUS training) and they have two adorable children, Joseph who is three and Hannah who is one.

We had the privilege of hosting them when they came to Dubuque last week. Travis was the speaker for the big event with students on Thursday night. He talked about answering God's call and getting out of the boat in our Christian lives. The students were very receptive and we feel like it's going to be a great year!


The next day Rebecca, Hannah and I joined Kjersti (our team director's wife) and her one year old girl Olivia for a play date.

Camping

The next adventure was a camping trip for the FOCUS student leaders. So far we feel like we've seen a lot of the Iowa country side and it is beautiful! This time we were about 30 miles south of Dubuque in Bellevue State Park, again on the Mississippi River.

Along with the missionaries, a few students spent the night and the rest joined us the following day. While people were setting up tents, Tyler and I made our bed. That's right, inside our truck. We have always wanted to sleep in it, because there is so much room when you put the seats up. Well, we fulfilled our dream and it's one of those, "Been there, done that." It was an adventure.



Kourtney loves the outdoors and she brought her own charcoal grill and cooked hamburgers and brats for dinner.


The guys were very inventive in collecting fire wood and starting the fire with the car lighter and paper.


As the sun was setting we went for a Rosary walk and a little hike through the woods. Then we came back and made s'mores.



The crew from left to right: back row Andrew, Tyler, Tony, Jason, front row Dene', Stacey, and Kourtney


In the morning the other student leaders joined us and the missionaries gave talks on the upcoming year.

Tyler gave the vision talk and challenged everyone to keep in mind the goal of helping each other get to heaven.


In FOCUS student leaders are grouped into 'discipleship chains' and under each missionary there are four to five students who lead a bible study and disciple one to two other students. (And it keeps going down the chain which is what we refer to as 'spiritual multiplication' which is what Jesus did. He poured into Peter, James and John who in turn went out and poured into others. We are striving to fulfill the scripture "Go out and make disciples of all the nations.") There are 21 student leaders at Loras and we have a goal to be at 40 at the end of the year.

Kourtney's chain:

Jason's chain:

Stacey's chain:


Since Tyler is working with the athletes, he doesn't have any disciples yet but will hopefully have athletes interested in bible studies and discipleship later in the year.

Team Off-Site

We arrived in Dubuque about two weeks ago and have been going fast since we got here. The first adventure we took was with our team to a cabin just outside of town by the Mississippi River. We all spent the night and had time to get to know each other as well as discuss the upcoming year.





Tyler and his team director Jason cookin' brats and drinking beer.

Teammates Stacey and Kourtney in the kitchen. Don't they look like they could be sisters?

Stacey eating her first brat. It was quite the ordeal.

Jason and Kjersti's little girl Olivia (who will have a baby sister towards the end of November!)


We love our team and all the personalities mix together to create a very fun atmosphere that will be great for this year!

Champions!

The Married Men's College won the soccer championship last Tuesday night. This was a very big deal. Needless to say, the wives were all very proud of their husbands and we love them so much we listened to them recount the entire season, detail by detail. There was a high intake of beer, many laughs, and talk about a dynasty next year.

The husbands were the first to say this season wouldn't have been a success without the wives.

And we decided we had powers because of our rings...or something like that.

It's good to end summer training on a high note!

Hello Loras College!

This past weekend Tyler and I took a small road trip, about four hours, to our new town, Dubuque, IA. If you would have asked us if we ever thought we would live in Iowa, we both would have laughed. Iowa gets a really bad rap in general, but especially from Nebraskans. I talked to someone today from Lincoln and told her we were going to Iowa, and she laughingly said, "Good luck crossing the border." Someone else told me that people from Nebraska hate Iowa just because it is next to us, but it is actually a good state. Anyways...

Our first experience of Iowa was Friday night about 9pm crossing the Missouri River from Illinois into Iowa. Something was hitting our windshield and I thought it was rain. But then whatever it was stayed on our windshield. Yes, it was bugs. Hundreds of bugs hitting our windshield. It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen.


We apartment-hunted for most of the day Saturday. In my mind I was going to blog about our "House-Hunter" experience and show you the three places we looked at and the perfect one we chose. Well, it doesn't work like that. I always thought people on that show had to have looked at more than three places. We looked at about six different places and are still on the hunt. (Side-note: Dubuque has, especially around the campuses, huge houses that are broken up into four to eight apartments. One place we liked, but there were two doors, one from the bedroom hallway and one from the kitchen, that lead into the rest of the "house" and even though they were locked, we weren't quite okay with that. I guess it's common, but a new phenomenon to us.)

Then our team director, Jason, gave us a tour of Loras campus. It is beautiful, lots of trees, and it is so small that the one road that did go through campus was blocked off so you can only walk or bike through campus.

This is the outside of the Church on campus. There is also an Adoration Chapel a few blocks away, which used to be the old Church.

This is the student union. It is a really cool building inside. There is a Pub, the cafeteria, and a lounge area. It's the place on campus to hang out, or so we've heard.

They call this statue "Lay-up Jesus". Not sure how I feel about it yet...

This is the library. I think he said it was the second largest library in Iowa?

This is a freshman hall, but also where the FOCUS office is.

Here is the field...

and of course, Coach Rosser checkin' it out!