I always love this time of year, even though it's exhausting. We're doing events every single day and meeting hundreds and hundreds of new students. Our Denton director Ryan told me that they had about 375 students at their first FOCUS service last night (UNT starts a week earlier than UTD). I heard from Casey, who is leading our Dallas College planting team, that at a student orientation event this week, the president of the college came up to our table, handed his card to our team, and said "We're glad you're here. If you need anything, contact me directly." Wow!
We also had a big breakthrough at Collin College on some of the challenges we've had getting reservations and rooms. Sarah was able to meet with a higher up person this week after reaching out to the Board of Trustees with the problems we're facing. By the end of that day, all of our requests had been approved!
I heard from one of the young women pastors this week about a conversation with a freshman in the dining hall: "Ella and I went together today to meet new people and we bumped into a girl named Nariah who came and joined us to eat. We got to get to know each other some and she pretty quickly opened up about her life and some of her struggles. She was asking us how to deal with negative thoughts that she has about herself--feeling like her past and present sins make her unworthy to be a part of Christianity. I got to ask her 'how do you think God views you?' And she paused and said 'honestly, I don’t know.' Ella and I got to share about God’s love and how that has to be where we start from to start unraveling lies we’re believing and also got to pray over her. She was so grateful that we came over because she hadn’t made any friends on campus and is excited to come to our events and get involved!" (Eating in the dining hall without a dining plan is expensive but SO EFFECTIVE at connecting with new students, especially ones like Nariah who might not be bold enough to go to an event by themselves but still need to eat! One generous couple gives money every year to pay for bold young believers to show up and meet new students meal after meal. What a cool ministry!)
I love it because I get to hear SO MANY stories like this. We have a couple hundred young leaders going out on these campuses as missionaries, and they are impacting so many people at a pivotal moment in their lives.
Thank you for praying (and paying!) to make these stories a reality. The Lord is using our partnership to advance his kingdom!
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| These are the FOCUS pastors across our 16+ campuses this year! Phenomenal group. |
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| At our staff retreat, I got to do some teaching on why we do things the way we do them, reflecting on the example of Jesus. |
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| For UTD, we had a training day for the 26-27 core leaders. Laurence is teaching about God's will for our lives in this picture. We have over 60 student core leaders at UTD this year, plus a bunch of other leaders for various outreach groups! |
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| This will give you an idea of how crazy our first couple weeks at UTD is. We have events every day, plus daily tabling on campus to hand out coffee, meeting people in the dining hall, and just hanging out with people we've already met. These student leaders hustle! |
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| Some of our leaders hanging out with freshmen the first day of move in. |
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| We try to have a constant visible presence in areas where lots of people are passing by. |
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| I wanted to mention this crew for a special prayer request. Taylor, Asa, Renee, Angel, and Tania (in the front) are our missionary team at SMU this year. It's a big deal because their long-time director Garrett has transitioned to leading a church. So they're on their own this year. But they are killing it! They have pushed past car breakdowns, a fall down some stairs, and lots of hot afternoons to be present and love new SMU students. Please be praying for them to remain in the Vine and bear much fruit. |
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| And I'll just drop this here... Big changes coming in March of '27! Pray for me! |
Student Testimony
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