Chandler Creel

Take a quick photo tour of Tübingen, my beautiful city.


Here's a video of some Tübingen students. Some of these faces might be my friends in a few months. Don't they look like good people?

The following is an email from my good friend and fellow Globalscope campus minister Jason Tatum. He is currently in England and his experiences are a huge encouragement to me.

The people that came in for the afternoon were all people who are now on this list. It was the fall exchange student, Katie Ruth, the spring exchange student Laura, Spain exchange student, Brittany, and girlfriend of fellow teammate, Molly. It was a blast to have them here. It was a good thing to have them up to see the campus and the city and get excited about where they are going to be in the near future. We met up with Nathan and then Kevin and Leah and we hit a couple of pubs, plus the Rooster House. It was great to see them all interacting and asking them questions about living in Birmingham and generally just getting excited about how big this is that we all get to be apart of. I just can't put it into words how great it was.

After I dropped the girls off at the station, I went back to Selly Oak to meet up with Nathan and a student named Pete, who were hanging out a pub called "The Goose." Pete first met Robert and Natalie and the Millers back in early February, and they were all fast friends. From the beginning, Pete let it be known that he was an atheist, completely unbelieving in any sort of God, particularly a Christian God. Regardless of that, they all kept loving Pete and inviting him to events and hangouts and Pete kept on showing up. One night Pete's house was broken into, and the first people that he called were his friends from Globalscope, or Canvas, as our ministry is known. Of course, Kevin and Leah went over to help him clean up, and it was little moments like that really started to make Pete think that these people really loved him. Well eventually Nathan arrived in England and they were fast friends. They began to hangout all of the time and honestly really grew to have a big love for one another. After awhile, Nathan and him were having many conversations about Jesus and faith and all of this God stuff. These conversations kept fueling Nathan and I would go so far as to say that it fuels the entire team as well in a lot of ways.

I knew when I showed up tonight that Pete was important. Everyone loves this guy so much that they talk about him non-stop. I met him for the first time at breakfast on Saturday, but sadly we did not really have the chance to connect. So I sat down tonight and we start talking. He is telling me about going to church with Nathan and his thoughts on the subject, and how he has been pleasantly surprised and how he feels like it is good for him. Pete tells me about how he isn't a Christian, but how he is now open up to the possibility of God, and how much respect he has for the Canvas people, and how much he respects Jesus and his teaching.

So I am just sitting there listening and asking him questions. I am asking questions about what he believes and what he doesn't believe, about what he has considered and what he hasn't. He keeps answering honestly and would occasionally say things like "Yes, that's something I haven't considered" or "Yeah, we've talked about that before, and I just haven't made up my mind." You know, it was just good talk about Jesus and all. At one point Pete goes to the bathroom and Nathan says "Gosh. Every time he starts talking about Jesus, it just about makes me cry. I want him to know Jesus so much." Pete would come back and we would talk some more. He kept telling me how much Nathan means to him, and Nathan says "You're going to make me cry." Pete replied "I know that I'm going to make you cry one day." Pete knows, because Nathan has told him so, that when Pete decides to follow Jesus that Nathan will weep. Pete says "Yeah. I have potential, don't I Nathan?" Nathan is on the verge of tears again.

This entire time our conversations would be skipping in and out of talk about TV shows, America, England, and then always back to Jesus. The guy is just overall hilarious and so much fun to be around, you can really talk about anything. So the night goes on and Pete keeps telling me how much Canvas means to him, how Nathan is one of his best friends, how he had made the Canvas house his second home. Another thing that we were talking about was Nathan and his granddad, who hasn't been doing well, and how "Cotton" (as he is known) is such an amazing man and has done so many great things with his life. And so that gets me thinking, and I start talking about how amazing it is that Nathan gets to sit there with Pete and share Jesus with him because of the fact that his father knew Jesus and shared him with him and how Cotton had done the same thing. We were all kind of caught up in the moment of it all, how it was because of Cotton knowing Jesus that Nathan was sitting there at that table, hanging out with Pete. I looked over to Nathan and I said "You know, it's almost like the legacy of who your grandfather was is now being seen right here at this table, through you, with Pete." And then Nathan starts to tear up. And Pete is getting caught up in it, and Pete is talking about how great Cotton must have been because of how great Nathan has been to him, and now I'm sitting there and the tears begin to well up in my eyes. Pete raises his glass and says "Here's to Cotton." And I tell Pete that in ten years he'll be sitting at that same table, loving someone just like himself and they too will be toasting to Cotton because of the Jesus that loved us all so much. And you can see that Pete is truly open to that idea, to that crazy dream.

At one point Nathan goes to make an order and Pete looks over at me and says: "I can't really put into words what this guy means to me. He's one of my best friends. I have never had anyone believe in me like he does."

And you should know by now that Pete knows what we are all about. He knows that all of this money was raised and everyone left their hometown and friends and families because they wanted to meet him. I mean, he knows it. And so I started telling Pete about this ministry that they have over at Georgia Tech. How there are these 400 hundred or so students that are coming in and out of the doors throughout the week, coming in to play games, to talk about their lives, to have someone listen to them, to eat free food, to love people and to be loved, and how its a place full of people like him. And Pete just says that it sounds incredible, and Nathan just sort of exclaims "It is so big! This whole thing is so big!" and Nathan and I again begin to tear up in front of Pete, and Pete smiles with us, and we toast to Cotton again. And I ask Pete to excuse us, that this isn't just a show, that this is our lives. And he tells us that he knows, and that he loves us. And he tells me how he can't wait for me to be over permanently.

And we continued to talk.. it was such an emotional night, and the conversation was so real and wonderful.

And then I asked Pete if he wanted to know about what I am having to do be able to come to England to hangout with him. And so I tell him this whole story, from the very beginning. I told him how I talked at Cafe CCF back in late November, and how something in that talk changed me, how it woke something up in me by telling everyone that I wanted to lose weight, marry a great woman and move to England. How I wanted to change the world. I told him how what I really wanted was to have Jesus. I told him how this whole weight loss thing is my greatest struggle. I told him about the talk that I gave about England the next week and how something starting working in me, and how I went to be that Sunday night in December thinking "Today is the day." I told him all of this.

I told him about the walking, and the asking people to pray and the conversations with Angie that led to this very email list. I told him how it started with just a few and how now there are so many more. I told him all of that and how all of this is because, sure, I want to live a long life, sure, I want to be healthy and all of that, but really I want this because I want to come over and hangout with him. I told him that these 76 pounds have been about him, someone that I had never met before. I told him all of this and more.

And after this email, Pete will be reading these as well. Pete is going to be in on this little community. Pete told me that he would really like to get the emails. Pete made me tear up for the third time that night.

And right now, by the talk of Cotton, by the talk of CCF, by the talk of these emails and by the talk of how this is what our lives are about, Nathan is on the phone with his mom in the other room, crying his eyes out. Crying, because this is real. Because the Jesus that walked around with dirty feet and died an ugly death, is now walking around the streets of Birmingham, walking around with the hands and the feet of this campus ministry that we call "Canvas." He is walking right into the arms of Pete, I guy who told me tonight that he never really felt like he was worth anything, who told me tonight that he had always hated himself- that is- before he met the people from Canvas.

We hugged and Pete told me that he loved me, that loved Nathan, and then we parted ways. Nathan and I practically skipped the entire way home.

Tatum


This is why i'm going to Germany.

Speaking of soccer, these are nice, especially since the number 1 goal was Germany.