Ice Cream Connect Event

The past five Tuesdays, I spent my evenings in the UTC auditorium eating ice cream with completely new people. This event, Ice Cream Connect, is put on by Christian Students on Campus each week and is designed for freshman orientees to meet club members over a bowl of icy deliciousness. We’ve had quite a crowd every Tuesday evening, since the allure of ice cream goes hand-in-hand with the jungle-esque humidity on campus.

This past week was the sixth and last freshman orientation of the summer, and I ambled into the Ice Cream Connect auditorium just as I had every week before. My usual approach is to bulldoze somebody into sitting down with me so that I can ask them the preliminary “what are you studying” kind of questions before wagging the gospel of John at them and soliciting a phone number. Except that every week, the Lord comes in and I end up being touched by the student I’m sitting with. The final Ice Cream Connect was no exception, and the Lord arranged for me to have a sweet conversation with a freshman named Kenzie.

Something I learned early on about Kenzie was that she lived in Cairo, Egypt for the past four years. Her father’s job required that the family move overseas before Kenzie entered high school and she was now coming to UT without, understandably, knowing anyone. Rather than quaking in her boots, however, she had a boldness about her and I was struck by Kenzie’s enthusiasm at being in a new place. She was excited to make new friends, and she also felt ready to reevaluate the Christianity she had adhered to during high school.

I am not too sure what her Christian experiences were before coming to Texas, but it was evident that Kenzie wanted to challenge something she’d once accepted and establish for herself what the truth really was. My friend, Abby, and I felt happy to share with Kenzie how we personally experienced the Lord during college, and then the three of us agreed that it was very good to tell God, “Hey, You have to be real to me!”

I said goodbye to Kenzie without any plans to read the gospel of John, and without any noticeable change in her outward situation. But actually, the time I was able to share with her served to remind me that the most real experiences of the Lord are just that. Real and relateable. I think Kenzie sensed this, too, and she went happily on her way.

Ice Cream Connect has been one of those times where the Lord has made Himself available. And since we have made ourselves available, God is able to reach man. It’s like being a channel for that “river of water of life” in Revelation 22:1, just a conduit for something bright as crystal to flow outward. Because even if we only have a sweet conversation with somebody and we don’t know exactly what we are doing, we can trust that the Lord is being real through and to people who are also very real.

By: E. Kedzie