February update!
Hi friends and family! I hope you are all doing well and felt loved this past valentine's day!
Your support towards me shows me God's love through you, and I'm very thankful for you!
Valentine's core!
I told our girls to dress in pink for small group that day, and we had valentines themed snacks, and played Family Feud:Valentine's Day Edition, it was lots of fun! Our core topic for the night was "Perfect love casts out all fear" because this was the sermon series at our large group gathering that we have been going through this month. We focused on the story of Daniel 3 with Shadrack, Messchak, and Abendigo. We asked questions such as: "How did they get to that place of response?" and "What would it look like for you to trust God in the face of your fears?". We ended with having them re-write Psalms 3 in their own words based on whatever fears they are currently undergoing in their own life. We focused on how they can identify their fears, but ultimately how they can focus on ending their written psalm with praise and trusting in who God is, just like David did. A lot of my explanation and use of Psalm 3 came from the sermon series that our Focus Director, Ryan gave as to having the students be more reflective about the fears in each students life, how to deal with them by focusing on God, and by not dwelling on the often irrational thinking that comes from our fears. If you want to hear more on this sermon, or our other ones which are all super powerful, here's the link:
Girls game night!
Here are a few the girls in our ministry (mostly UNT small group leaders that we call corefas) who were invited over to one of our girl's ministry houses for a game night to bond with one another! We don't often get to hang out outside of ministry event settings with just the girls, so it was really nice to fellowship with one another into the late hours! We recently had a shift in our leader team, and two of the girls who are new leaders came and it was great getting to see them grow closer to the other girl leaders in our ministry!
BLOOM gospel worship night!
BLOOM (Black Lights Of Our Ministry) is something myself and a group of other black students within our Denton FOCUS ministry created last year as a way of introducing different aspects of black culture into our ministry for others to experience if they never have before, but especially for it to be a place where we can make our students feel seen, known and loved by focusing on ways to diversify our community and shed light on the importance of doing so. This year for Black History Month, we had another gospel worship night, but this time it was in the form of a takeover of our weekly fellowship meetings. Debby (another student in our ministry, who is pictured with the food on the upper left photo) and I organized this event. In the middle photo you can see part of our gospel choir which included about fifteen students in our ministry. Also throughout the night, we incorporated spoken word poem sharings, and a time for different students to come and share about the prompt: "What does Black History Month mean to me?" where they shared heartfelt stories from their upbringing about what it was like to grow up being black.
It was a deeply powerful night, that touch myself and many other students in a very meaningful way that will always stay with me. After our service, one of our ministry houses allowed us to use their home for a night of food and dancing! Debby and I spent several hours the day of the event cooking various Nigerian foods such as: fried rice, plantains, and fried chicken (this food is pictured above). Debby who is Nigerian was showing me the ropes in the kitchen, and it was a really sweet time getting to learn how to cook those dishes with her, and I'm so thankful for her willingness to have been the one to initiate this event as a whole, and have helped put so many hours into planning, and executing it. I couldn't have done this event without her. The last photo shows you how many students we had on the "dance floor", not including the ones on the sides or in the backyard. This was taken during a dance circle, and we also had lots of line dances and opportunity for lots of students to join in on learning new steps to various Afro beat songs, or just general black American songs they may not have known previously. It was an awesome turnout and night all around!
Below, I have uploaded several videos onto my YouTube page from the gospel worship night, and the dancing event afterward, so you can get a better sense of what the night was like. Also, so that you can appreciate the beautiful voices of our worship choir and all their hard work spent on this event! Please let me know your thoughts if you get a chance to listen!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6UzM-krFOdWaggerxRp46g
Pizza Theology!
This event occurred this past sunday and is something all of the FOCUS campuses put on once a semester as way of having our students engage in various theological topics to deepen their faith and expand their threshold for higher learning. We always tell our students that since they are seeking a college education and gonna graduate after growing in their intellectual abilities that it should be the same thing when it comes to diving into one's faith in their college years. We shouldn't ever seek a stagnant place in our faith where we are no longer diving deeply into scripture and in our relationships with God and we really want our students to always seek to learn more and more, not for the sake of higher knowledge, but to foster deeper closeness with God himself. It's called Pizza Theology because it's a five hour long deep dive into different topics with an hour break in between where we provide pizza and fellowship time for our students. This year's topic was about the bible and how reliable it is, about its historical roots, translation history. We discussed the importance of looking into scripture's original language so we aren't putting our own modern lense into the biblical text that was not meant for our current social context because we can run into a lot of trouble in doing so. A lot of the context from this event's topics is what a lot of our apprentice classes discuss a lot about. I am so thankful for a ministry that cares so much about teaching its pastors and students to be growing in their contextual understanding of the bible. It has helped me develop a more solid foundation in my faith than I had before the apprenticeship, and allow me to more deeply understand God, and how complex and beautiful scripture really is.
Last night, we carpooled over to the UTD campus for their event called "A night of Black Church". This was put on by UTD FOCUS's BLISS (Black Lives In Soulful Solidarity). After BLISS was created, that was part of the reason I wanted to do something like that at our denton campus and is why we have the similar name BLOOM as a sister group to them in a way. This event was to reflect what a typical black american church environment would be. They encouraged us to dress in our "Sunday's best" attire which back in the day, was termed that because Sunday's were the one day of the week were slaves were able to put on their nicer clothing. The event included, gospel singing, praise dancing, a student sermonette, and lots of instrumentals that reflected the high and very fun energy of a typical black church service. The picture above shows a picture of the girls in my small group who were able to go, and the bottom picture shows half of the crowd and the "Armstrong sisters" who were guest singers who did an amazing job. Lailah, who is on staff at UTD is the one who created BLISS and ran the event. She is incredible in her ability to execute such a well-run event for the second year in a row, and someone who just loves God and minsters so well to the students at UTD. She has really changed the culture of their campus to be more lively and diverse and she is just such a gift to our staff team! I have also included a video clip of this event for you to view in the Youtube link above!
Student Testimony of the month!
Thank you for your constant generosity toward me, I thank God for each of you!
Blessings and Peace,
Keanna
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