ICF

Friday nights I engage in conversation with, teach English to (scary thought, I know), and lead musical worship for international students who come to the friday night fellowship on the Penn State campus. (The group is called "International Christian Fellowship"). Today I decided to bring my camera along and take photos, because I've told a lot of people about this group but have never posted any photos.

Also, today it snowed, and was beautiful, and we had a clear intense blue sky in the evening so I took photos of walking to the fellowship room.

So these are stepping out of my building, then walking over the IST bridge, which is a whole other building in and of itself. Possibly the coolest building on all of campus, actually.

In the fellowship room, the church responsible for this weeks food sets up their food on a set of tables and stands behind it and serves along with some of the ICF staff. The students lineup and get the food. This week it was thanksgiving themed food... turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce. It was tasty

Here's Solomon teaching Grace a special handshake, with an interested onlooker standing behind. Solomon is from South Africa, and speaks the Zulu click tongue, a most interesting language which, among other things, features clicking noises made with the tongue. Grace is the ICF student group treasurer and is a real character.

This is HaeYun. He and I beat out various classic worship songs and hymns. We aren't exactly musician extraordinairs, however, we have an audience that loves the music and learns about God through it, so I couldn't ask for more. Sometimes a girl named Johanna sings for us which is good because she can sing loud and well, and neither of us really know how to do that part.

Here's the dinner line in formation. There were a lot of US folks tonight

Here's Bill... he's the head and cordinator of the PSU ICF ministries. He's got his hands full on Friday nights, but here he greets everyone in the line. He knows pretty much everyone there by name, except the new people who always come.

These are some English lesson tables. ICF participants have two options normally: go to a bible study, or have an English lesson in which you learn idioms. Today, at my table was: Changnan (from China), Ali (from Peru), Haeyun (from Korea), Grace (Taiwan), and Keith, who lived in Sendai, in the same building as me, for a whole semester, and I didn't know he was there. We found out afterwards. He is a cool brother in Christ... we tag teamed for the lesson. It was about Thanksgiving, and the origin of the holiday.

We always close with one of the Christian brothers or sisters sharing their testimony. Tonight, Barbara, Bill's wife, shared. She is nervous infront of a crowd, but you actually wouldn't know at all because she spoke very well. Then, we did a couple songs, (Haeyun, Johanna, and I), and then we closed.

So there you have it, that's ICF