March blog!

 Hi friends and family! We are sadly flying through the rest of the year as the end of the semester is approaching very quickly! It has been such a great spring semester, and a big part of that has been your support in my ministry!

A Night Of Gospel Worship event with BLISS!

This was another event put on to celebrate black history month. BLISS stands for (Black Lives In Soulful Solidarity) and was created a few years back by our UTD staff member Lailah, who wanted to create a space in our UTD focus ministry to allow black students to feel a deeper sense of connection and inclusion. One of the events to do this, is this one where Lailah and other focus students put on a night of gospel worship similar to what we did in our black history event in denton. One big difference of this event though is that all campuses are invited, along with our family of churches to come and join in. So it is such a special time each year to come together and worship with not just our other college campus students, but also other members of our churches who come! Along with worship, there was a praise dancing performance from our own staff member Lailah (she was previously a professional dancer) a student, and an apprentice with me last year, Angel (who also danced professionally). I mention this because I think its so neat getting to see these people who God has given a beautiful talent of dancing, but also have used them in a ministry setting where we get to see how God allows us to both use several of our gifts for his glory! 

Spring break fun!

While some students were back home, or out of town, some of them stick around or live pretty close by which allows me to get to spend some time with them that is just for fun, and not just our normal ministry setting time together. Maya (in brown) just moved to downtown Dallas since she started her first semester at the TWU Dallas nursing school. Kenedy (in the middle) and I went to go visit her, and get a tour her new apartment, and spend some time exploring Dallas! The three of us get monthly time together, which is so special to me because I lead small group with them three years ago, and I'm so thankful to continue having a relationship with them years later since that doesn't always happen.

Murphie got married!

Murphie, the person I lead my Wednesday small group with got married to her husband Jeremy last weekend! A majority of our small group got to come (although not pictured), and it was such a wonderful time getting to celebrate her altogether! 

CCF mission week!

CCF (Christian Campus Fellowship) is connected to Chi Alpha which is a nationwide ministry. The Washington Chi Alpha is our partner ministry and their students came to Denton during their spring break for a week of learning how to do outreach and evangelism on our UNT, TWU, and NCTC campuses! This was probably one of my favorite events of the year! Previous years, when CCF would come down for their mission week they would be hosted by our other FOCUS campuses at UTD, and Collin Community College. This year, however, Denton got to host them for one of the first times in many years and it was my first time to experience helping to lead it. What's so neat about this is that their students come down to partner with our ministry during the spring each year, and then every summer in May is when we send our own students up to Washington for a similar trip! It's really neat getting to have a partner ministry where we use the same ministry tools, and have similar visions and missions! Our students that live in ministry homes are the ones who host these students to stay for the week which is a great opportunity for our students to learn how to serve others and how to think more deeply about outreach since these Washington students spent their own money to fly across the states during their personal spring break specifically to minister to the people on our campuses, that is a huge deal and so selfless of them! Our Denton church  that supports focus called Denton North Church took the time to provide dinners for these students throughout the week, and paid for it which was a huge help to our ministry, and it gave them an opportunity to meet and connect with these students as well!

Everyday these students spent a majority of their days doing outreach! They would start the day by doing a devotional often led by their own students. Then they would head onto campus for the day. The first day we did an outreach activity called: "Identity man" with a giant wooden-shaped man that was covered with tiny square-shaped mirrors asking people the question: "what makes you, you?" to help people identify what they place their value in. Another day we asked questions like: "What is your roman empire?" (meaning, what is something that fills a majority of your thoughts?) This question was aimed at what people tend to prioritize, or what motivates them. Another question was more like a game: "Bible verse or song lyric?" seeing if people could differentiate since most people know general scriptures, but tend not to know a majority of scripture. This question helped us ask about people's church backgrounds more easily. We also did "spiritual listening" where our people would ask the holy spirit to give them a word of encouragement to speak to people who walked by to minister to maybe a specific situation they might be facing. 

Another activity was "treasure hunting" where you would pick an object that you would look out for that someone was wearing, and then go up and talk to them as a way of conversational evangelism. Other activities were just for engagement like: display boards of questions like: What is truth? What do you think about Jesus/your experience? We also did crafts, temporary tattoos, and everyday for lunch the Washington students were challenged to go and sit with a random person, and have conversations with them. In the photo here, one of our staff members made a cross to display, and they asked people about their prayer requests, and they would put them on the cross, and pray for that person. They also had some Washington students sing worship with a guitar as a way of evangelism. My favorite thing about all of this, is that we just got to experiment and try new things to see what would spark others interests'. Every afternoon there would be debriefs, and I think overall it was neat hearing how bold these Washington students were to bring up faith questions, and it was neat how open for the most part other campus students were in engaging in conversations, already looking to have a deeper relationship with Jesus, or wanted to be connected to our ministry which was a huge encouragement. 

One thing that really stood out to me about the Washington students was how quick they were to engage in prayer over students on campus, or even just with one another. I constantly saw their initiative to make Jesus the center of everything they did, and I think the Lord was very honored by them this week.

This is the whole Washington crew when we took them to a scavenger hunt around Bucee's! For many of them, it was their first ever time to Texas, so I loved getting to show them around to some great spots for a true Texas experience! 

At our weekly large gathering for TNF, we did a "Texas TNF" night where we had everyone dress up in western attire, and we gifted our Washington students cowboy hats, and bandanas. For the hats, we had pens for our own focus students to go up to them and sign their names on their hats so they had a souvenir to take back home with them! We did Texas fun facts throughout the service, and had country dancing as an event after the service. It was a great night to welcome them to our fellowship gatherings!

These were two of their leaders to the right of me (Johana and Hannah). They did an awesome job leading this group of students, and they left a huge impact on me just with how deeply you can sense the Lord's work in their life through their obedience and heart to look and love like Jesus through their intentional question asking to get to know our staff deeper, continuous overflow of gratitude, and the way they talked of their ministry and what Jesus has done in their own lives. Super thankful to have met them!

                           Here's a snippet of our week with them that we showed our other students during our weekly sharing time at our large group gathering!

Student testimony! 

Thank you so much to each of you for your continuous outpouring of love and support!

Blessings and peace,

Keanna