Architecture. At times it's been an amazing experience and at other times it makes my life completely miserable. What's funny is most of the time it does both of these things at the exact same time. Probably one of the most challenging things about it has been the isolation it forces us architecture students to submit to so often. We're on north campus. (I cannot believe how many people I've talked to that have never been there.) We're in one building for all of our classes. We spend many many hours outside of class in this one building. Our roommates never see us. We are difficult to relate to, our program is obscure, and occasionally on those delusional nights when the sun has almost risen and our projects are still not complete we wish we were back in the good ole school of LS&"play."

What I've been discovering is that these seemingly horrible aspects of being an architecture student are really what make so much of the experience worthwhile. The fact that no one else sees us and that no one else can really understand us makes our community so unique. No one else sees us, but we see each other very often. No one else completely understands us, but we're able to relate because of our similar academic situation. We're a group of 120 with similar passions and dreams.

However, a smaller group of us also have a different passion. Five or six of us who are believers and involved in various ministries on the campus have begun a prayer group for the school of architecture. After a semester of adjusting to the school, starting relationships with classmates and instructors, and being torn apart by projects and late nights, we all recognized a similar burden upon all of our hearts. We realize that we are in such a unique situation here in this school, being amongst people who never see anyone else but one another. With this in mind, we wanted to take full advantage and ask God to use us to show Christ to this concentrated group of people. We began to meet once a week as the second semester started up, sharing our prayer requests for the school, encouraging one another, and praying together. It's been exciting joining forces with fellow Christians in the school instead of feebly praying on my own occasionally. There's something about knowing for sure that there are other Christ followers fighting right along side you :) One of the girls in the prayer group has already testified to a small way that God answered our prayers. After a meeting where we prayed for the Holy Spirit to just begin moving in our specific design studios (sections of about 12 students) and to open up opportunities for us to be used, she shared that after inviting her studio to her Michigan Gospel Chorale concert, one of her classmates approached her and she was able to have a pretty open discussion about her faith and specifically prayer. She was excited to share that she really felt that it was God speaking through her and that this was just one seed that was able to be planted. We want to keep praying with faith that this is just the beginning of what God wants to do in this school!