August blog!
Hi friends and family! It's the best time of the year in ministry! All of our returning and brand new students are on campus again!
Here's a verse that we have had as our foundation for our weeks of meeting and outreaching to those on the campuses:
1 Corinthians 2: And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
Before our several weeks of all day outreach on campus, we always start with a training day for our student leaders. We make sure to emphasize to our students that it’s all about Jesus and God’s power in them and not their own abilities to reach people, to lead their small groups, or to do any sort of disciplining this year. Every part of our ministry is all due to the spirits work empowering us towards loving and looking like others. This has been especially needed for myself to remember since we have had the biggest amount of students come to our large groups than any year before. However, none of that is credit to be taken for ourselves.
First official Thursday Night Fellowship! (TNF) of the year!
This was our first large group worship service of the year!
The series we're doing the first few weeks of school to introduce those who may be new to faith to Jesus, and for those who are familiar to get a sense of a reason to deepen their faith more than before. Something that stood out from our director Ryan sharing during the sermon was: "God's spirit sustains us as we go on mission for him despite the hardships we face".
Picture on the right is our second worship service gathering! Since we've grown so much, we are having issues finding a room big enough at UNT to seat our students. Please be praying for the UNT staff to be gracious, and accommodating to help us have a long-term solution for our students this year!
Community college small group!
Something new this year is that in addition to meeting with students at TWU, and UNT, I will also be meeting with those at the community college in the neighboring Denton towns called NCTC. This will be my first time leading a co-ed small group with two of my male coworkers. One of them is Alex pictured here, at the NCTC Flowermound location, and I will also help lead a small group at NCTC Corinth location. Several of the girls we met just this week for their first week of school were able to carpool and make the drive over to our worship service at UNT and get to meet our ministry as a whole! Please be praying for our students on the community campuses where students often don't have the ability to connect with organizations since they are not offered as opposed to the large Universities, so many students often go throughout their beginning college years not connecting with other peers until they are able to transfer, and we hope to help change that narrative and be a space where students can still have an exciting college exercise even if its not at the university level.
Staff retreat!
Picture on the right: this is the group that I started ministry with when I did the internship in 2023! Its really sweet to continue getting to work in ministry alongside them!
Student Leader Baptisms!
After our student leader training, we had some of our student leaders get baptized! What was especially special about this was that in the first photo, the student leader (in white and the one to the right) Natalia, & Alexis were both who I got to mentor last year as they lead a small group, and in that small group was Caro (pictured in blue) who is a new student leader! This is yet another reason I love working in campus ministry is because I get to see how God uses our leaders to raise up other leaders every year which is one of our biggest ministry values!
Peer Team 26-27!
This is my second year leading a group of student leaders! They are a mix of TWU students and UNT students. After our training day, we got to end with dinner and getting to know parts of each others lives', I'm excited to befriend and disciple them this year! Please be praying for the small groups that they will be leading, that the girls they minister to will be open to what the spirit wants to do within them this year, and that they would desire to use their college life to be prioritized by Christ!
Morning Devotionals before outreach!
Each morning before going on campus to meet new students and invite them into our ministry this year, we had one student leader at two different ministry houses leading a devotional to prepare their hearts for the long, but fruitful day ahead! I love getting to be apart of seeing how initiative our students are, and how intentional they were to take the time to plan verses that would be an encouragement to their peers!
Welcome week outreach events!
This was a field night event that we did to outreach close to the dorms of the athletes on campus as a way to start expanding those who get involved in our ministry. We had a few athletes come, as well as a sorority group who I am hoping to continue being connected with throughout this year in order to hopefully get to disciple to the greek life on campus.
Multicultural worship night!
Every year, we make sure to have an event centered specifically on Christ so new students can get an idea of what our ministry is about, and to hopefully experience a new kind of worship they haven't before that celebrates multi cultures in the types of songs we sing, and different people who come up to speak verses in their own language. These years verse they read was: "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8
5K Bubble Run!
We invited students to do a run throughout campus, and we had various leaders with encouraging posters, and guns filled with bubbles as they ran by! We ended the night with ice cream, it was a great event!
For outreach at TWU, this is the first year that we got to be volunteers and meet students as they were moving into their dorms!
Event on the right: Family Feud event for our sub ministry called "The Kickback" that is for the black students in our ministry to have a space they can connect with other people with similar backgrounds!
Event on the left: One of our events where we have giant sports activities!
Student Testimony:
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