Oh, Chicago! The windy city blew us away when we visited during the first weekend of October. Seventeen of us Klesis seniors spent an action-packed three days at UChicago and Northwestern, doing outreach on the campuses and visiting our churches.

We didn’t actually eat ALL this ice cream, but we ate quite a lot of it and somehow lived to tell the tale.

We got a sneak peak into church plant life: the struggles that our friends in the Midwest faced in building a church from the ground up and getting the lay of the land at new campuses. They had exchanged luxuriously balmy Bay Area temperatures for actual seasons and sacrificed proximity to friends and family and much else to start our churches here. We also got to witness what made these costs worthwhile: the opportunity to get to know the students there and maybe even share Christianity with them, along with the joy and camaraderie that comes from a tight-knit Christian community trying to live out the Acts 2 church.

United (and re-united!) with our friends at Chicago.

The time we spent with our friends at UChicago and Northwestern was truly dear, but our other adventures were also memorable. A brief trip to the Billy Graham Center Museum at Wheaton College showed us how God worked through godly, but ordinary men and women to spread the message of Christianity throughout history, and galvanized us to do the same.

A bunch of ordinary men and women (and college students).

Of course, no trip to Chicago would be complete without all the hallmark tourist activities: gawking at the Bean, flying around Lake Michigan on rented bikes, and stuffing ourselves silly with too much deep dish pizza.

Yep, so that was our whirlwind trip to the windy city! By the time our stint in the Midwest was over, all seventeen of us knew that Chicago was in fact not a state, but a (somewhat large) city. Enhanced geographical awareness aside, we also left with a greater understanding of what it looks like to live according to Luke 9:23-24—a deeper conviction that the best thing to do with our lives is to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus.

At Lake Michigan. (AKA not the Pacific Ocean.)

Senior Chicago Trip Recap