“Hey, do you guys want to go to this Epic Legacy Summit conference in Minnesota?”
This was the question I asked our Epic students during one of our weekly meetings without much expectation. Our ministry was still fairly new and our small group still in the process of getting to know each other. Also, Minnesota is a long seven-hour drive away from our campus in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“Yes I would go.” “That sounds fun!” People’s responses to my question were a total surprise. I remember walking back from that Epic meeting, praising God for the students’ steps of faith.
There were three things that I was praying for as the day of the conference approached: First, for safe travel. Second, I prayed for God to do a work in the student’s hearts over the weekend of the conference. Third, I prayed for our Epic movement to grow closer as a fellowship.
Surprisingly and fortunately, God did not answer all of my prayers this time!
We got to Minneapolis safely on Friday. I was really excited to see students hanging out and getting to know some other Epic movements in the Midwest. I thought everything was going great when suddenly, one of our cars got into an accident on the way to an outreach at a local Hmong community. Our student who was driving was in tears. The car was her parents’ and she was so scared. But the Epic community surrounded her with support and she was able to get medically cleared from the accident and pick up a rental car for the drive home.
I was so thankful that the Epic staff were there to help students recover from anxiety and find the rental car to get back to Nebraska. God is in control of all things and directs things according to His purpose. And that night after the accident happened, God proved that fact by using the whole situation to open the heart of one of the students in our Epic movement, and bring him to salvation!
I remember when that student said the prayer to accept Christ at 3:00 am in the morning, with other Epic students laying their hands around him; I was just standing in awe in that beautiful picture. I could not believe after all the struggle we had been through that day, how Jesus used the chaos of the wrecked car for good — using fellowship and love in our community to open someone’s heart and bring him to Christ. With my hands lifted up, I just couldn’t help but praise Him and say “Thank you Jesus, You are so good!”
One student described the whole experience as “The best conference I have ever been to”. We grew so much closer as a family, and I could see that God was working in the student’s hearts to be more open and talk about their faith with each other.
I can see He is opening a new chapter for our movement in Nebraska after this conference: taking a step of courage to go out and experience Jesus and God’s love as a community. Seeing His work inside each of the students’ lives after this conference really confirmed my desire to work and serve the ministry, reaching out to Asian American on campus through Epic, wanting others to experience what nine of us did during the Epic Legacy Summit. This is just the beginning, and many more great things are yet to come within the Epic Movement at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln!
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