Second Month of Campus Ministry (September)

 This month has been such a blessing!

Thank you!

With how jam-packed this month was with building friendships, administrative successes, and strengthening the biblical scaffolding holding up my faith, I can tell that I am being prayed for! Thank you all so much for your support in prayer and in monetary donations! It has been so freeing to know that I can do what God is calling me to do without worrying about whether or not I'm going to be able to pay the bills. Your contribution has really been put to work this month, and God is doing some great things because of it!

Sharing and Shaping!

This month I got into the full swing of event planning! One of the things that we have started this year with the Dallas College FOCUS is to have weekly ministry hangout times for students to get to know each other and to have fun together. Our hope is to introduce a context were students can start to build deep, spiritual friendships that will last a life time, and to open up the door for them to engage with one another and begin to initiate these hangouts themselves! We do these weekly hangs every Tuesday night. I am in charge of planning the events, putting them on, making sure people are invited, and making sure that the venue, supplies, and activities are all as they should be before, during, and after the event. Here's what we did this month: 

• Movie Night at the Church (we watched the Emperor's New Groove)
  
• Cookout at my house (I made hot dogs and hamburgers and we played board games)
• Nickelrama (an arcade that takes nickels rather than quarters)
• Field Night (sports at the fields at Richland College)
• Scary Movie Night at my house this past Tuesday!

Here are some pictures of the cookout at my place!

These hangouts were such a great opportunity to get to know the students and for them to get to know each other! I felt like it really helped them to become open up with one another. One of the students, who is a corefa ("core facilitator" or student small group leader), told me that this cookout was his first college party and that he had a really great time and hoped that this is what all the future parties would look like. It was this comment that made me realize that not only are we meeting and loving these college students, we are shaping what life can be like for them. They don't have to get drunk or high at a party to have fun. They can have fun and be known for who they really at the same time. We love them for them and not for the mask that they show everyone else.

Learning and Growing!

On the other side of the apprenticeship, this was the first full month of our apprentice classes! We have 4 classes and 3 reoccurring workshops: Old Testament Foundations, a class with Ronnie Worsham, Leadership Principles with Brandon Worsham, Maturing with Mandy Lanciani, Preaching Workshop, Financial Stewardship Workshop, and the Holy Spirit Workshop. We haven't had the Holy Spirit Workshop yet, but these other classes have really helped me to grow spiritually, intellectually, and in my relationship with God. 

Spiritually, the class with Ronnie has been such a crazy ride. You know how sometimes you're just living your life as normal and you slightly bump into something and painfully realize that there was a bruise there? You had no idea there was a bruise, and you probably never would've known had you not just bumped into it. Ronnie's class is like that spiritually. Ronnie bumps into all of my spiritual bruises that I had no idea existed, but he also helps in starting the healing process for those bruises.

Intellectually, Leadership Principles with Brandon and the Old Testament Foundations class have really stretched my understanding of the bible and what it means to live out our faith for all to see. I've gotten to dive deep into what I believe and why, while also hearing new ways to serve others and continually place God back into the center of my life.

My relationship with God has been grown in so many ways through the Maturing class with Mandy. She is helping us work through a book about spiritual disciplines that have really helped me to see where I can begin to chip away my rougher edges and build up my spiritual muscles. One of the disciplines was practicing purposeful rest, and this phrase cut to my heart: "we are human beings, not human doings". I am very much a doer and I try to go go go in order to feel like I'm useful, but this study and discussion with Mandy and my class helped me to see just how important rest is and that sometimes just being is better than always doing.

Prayer Requests!

• A continued interest and desire in the students' hearts at Brookhaven to seek out a community, and that we can provide a place of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional growth for them.
• For me to continue to practice resting with God rather than feeling like I have to always be on the move.
• For the alive and active Word of God to infiltrate and take over my heart and the hearts and minds of all of the students in and around FOCUS.