Welcome Back! - August Ministry Update


 Open my lips, Lord,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

Psalm 51:15

No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another,

God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:12


Hello, my friends and team!

    Wowza! School has begun, and we're off to the races! Thank you so much for participating with me in what God is doing on campus. It's only the second week of school, and God has already done so much. Let's get right to it, this was August:


    Our first TNF (Thursday Night Fellowship) was a smashing success! The top picture shows the crowd of students that came to meet friends and to encounter God at TNF, and the bottom shows some of us playing definitely-professional-level volleyball afterwards. During TNF, I ended up sitting next to 3 guys who all said that they were desperate to have God pouring back into their lives after each of them had experienced metaphorical deserts over the last one or two years. One of them even said that God had placed him at Collin for a (to him unknown) reason, and after meeting FOCUS students, he was pretty sure that we were a big part of why. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!


    This is a picture of our first Collin Corefa meeting! "Corefa" is what we call our small group ("Core") student leaders ("fa"cilitators). We have an outstanding group of student leaders! In fact, most of the ministering is done by students (as opposed to full-time pastors)! They've worked really hard this past week and a half, outreaching to students and inviting them into their cores. If you look carefully in the back right, you might be able to see half of the guy corefas. Yes, the other half of us (including me) are having a whale of a time being crushed underneath.



    These pictures were taken during some of the times we were doing outreach at the Wylie Collin Campus. In the top picture, I'm standing next to Collin the Cougar and my new friend, Michael! Even though he's in school and works at two jobs, he's super stoked about making Christian friends, studying the Bible, and playing a bunch of arcade games at the super awesome free arcade area at the Wylie campus. I've already encountered a handful of others like Michael that have set up weekly meet-up times with me to study the Bible and to become deeper friends! I'm very blessed to have those opportunities.
    In the bottom picture, we asked passing students to let us know what they valued most. Guess what Wylie students value most? Friends/friendship was tied for having the highest count (8) along with family, but the former is a clear winner if you include community/relationships. Jesus/religion/faith/I AM was also high on the list. I'm so excited to be working on a campus and offering people what they already know they need: Christ-centered friendships and friendship with Christ. Thank you so much for being right there with me in spirit. I know you are excited about God working in these students too!


    These are some of the students that made up our first core at Wylie! You can see my cofa (co-facilitator), Orion, in the bottom left of the picture. For the first week of core, we shared about our friendship experiences and pondered what godly friendships look like. I'm looking forward to seeing where God takes our group and the friendships in it! No one has ever seen God, but if this group loves one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.


    As a bonus, here's a picture of some of the members of our church as we enjoy delicious Wendy's and each other's very fun company after church service this past sunday. You can spot my girlfriend, Alex, at the far right, and my friend that I had talked about in my previous ministry update, Azalee, sitting closest to me. Yay for fellowship!

Prayer Requests:

    Thank you for praying for SICM and for the first Wylie core! SICM was a great success, impacting and equipping many students. Please continue to pray for the students at Wylie Collin Campus!
    Please pray for peace and health for one of the Collin FOCUS ministers, Dani, and her baby. She is pregnant and has been throwing up a lot recently.

Thanks for reading! I'll talk with you again soon :)



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