January blog!

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 Hi friends and family! I hope you've all stayed safe and warm in this cold/snowy season! Thank you so much for your continuous support towards my ministry!

                        

                                                                                          Winter retreat 2025!

These are some of the girls from my Thursday night small group where I lead with Cassandra! (to the right of me in green)
                                    What one of the nights of worship looked like! A beautiful sight!                              
These are the girls from my Wednesday night small group where I lead with Murphie (in green to the left of me). 
Winter retreat is our biggest event that we put on in our ministry every spring! I know I always say every event is my favorite but this one truly is! There is seriously nothing better than praising Jesus with 700 students from all of our DFW campuses! Last year, we had talks from a guest speaker, but this year it was super special to get to hear from our own pastoral staff team. This year we covered topics such as: our identity in Christ, what it means to deeply follow Jesus, take up our own cross for Him, and sexuality. Some reflections I took away are that I love that our ministry isn’t afraid to cover harder topics that society is facing. Jesus was willing to say uncomfortable things to those he preached to because He loved them so much that he wanted true life and flourishing for them, not a surface level faith that won’t last. I think that’s exactly the angle our pastors took so that our students could take away ways of transforming their faith for one that is an actual reflection of Christ himself. Another reflection I had that I’ve mentioned before is how much our ministry has grown in diversity. Similar to last year’s winter retreat, we spent one extended worship night asking different students to read a verse in their own language. I got to hear languages that I’ve never even heard before and specific dialects I had no idea about! I think that’s the important reason we do that in the first place. To help us really step into being curious about other peoples backgrounds, and aware of the various cultures around us. Hearing the different languages was so powerful to me because it is a real representation of the kingdom of believers that are unified under our Lord.
A powerful quote that myself and several others took away from the sermons as a whole was when an alumni speaker said: “God wants to redeem your personality, not replace it”. Meaning, we don’t need to strive to have other skills to be used by God, he has gifted us with exactly what he deems good. This was said during our Faith and Vocation talks where we asked three different people who were previous pastors on our staff team to come and encourage our students about how to think about their work in a way that glorifies God. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear this myself and that was another takeaway I had, that no matter how long I do ministry, the messages will never just be for the students. God is always going to be teaching me and growing me more and more. There’s no such thing as “arriving” to a perfect place in my faith. Suffice it to say it was deeply impactful as it is every year and I’m so thankful to get to see how God is beginning to shape students and reveal truths about their lives for the first time. This retreat is often one that really jump starts people’s faith, and praise God for that!

The first five most recently uploaded videos on this link is where you can find the talks we heard. I highly recommend giving them a listen, even if you can’t sit and listen they are great for on the go as well! I would love to hear your thoughts if you want to email or text me and share any thoughts!

Winter Retreat


                                                                             Denton worship night at TNF!

The week before winter retreat we decided to do a more laid back large group gathering because we knew our students were about to take in a huge amount of information from the sermons at winter retreat. It was so neat to switch up our regular schedule and try some new things. We had our students reflect on different aspects of 1 Corinthians 13, and what it means for them to truly love like Christ, not in a superficial way, but in a way of depth. I led a section of the night over what’s called conversational prayer that’s basically a specific way to pray with a group of people focusing on each person praying through the same prompt before moving on to others. You can see in the photo that we spent time having them reflect over things going on with the world and not just with our own selves to help them be reminded of bigger things in life that are often heavy that we can overlook. It felt like such a warm family-like environment and I really enjoyed connecting with them in this way.


                                                                                          Public scripture reading!

We share different “snapshots” from the week during our large group gatherings, and this one was super encouraging! This is one of our TWU small groups reading the book of Matthew together, and they are going to continue meeting once a week to read throughout it. This is meaningful to me because these students already set aside time in their week for small group and large group meetings. They are going out of their way to read more scripture with one another in a public place of their university where others can also be encouraged by seeing them, and maybe joining in!



                                                                                            Gospel choir!

This was a photo I took from this past weekend where we had our first gospel choir practice for our Black History Month event during our large group gathering time in a few weeks towards the end of February. I love getting to put on this event for our students because representation is a really big thing for some students upon whether or not they feel seen in a community or not. Now however, our ministry is a lot more diverse as we have taken more initiative to try and do specific things that would help make people feel seen and known. I can’t wait to share with you in next month’s blog how this night goes! 


                                                                    Student testimony!


Thank you for your generosity and love poured out toward me in my ministry!

Blessings and peace,
Keanna



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