Starting the Work

Starting the Work!

September is finally here, and I now have 1/10 of my work under my belt. This last month we had our welcome week events, our first Friday Night Fellowship, and our first cores. During welcome week we had an event every day, which was very tiring, but also was very rewarding. UT Dallas has two Weeks of Welcome on their campus, with most large events taking place the second week (the first week of classes). There was one massive event on the first week, and that was "Big Howdy". This event was put on by ICF (an international student ministry at UTD), and they had all of the ministries on campus come and put up tables to introduce the international student body to us. Focus had huge success at this event. We probably had close to 300 students sign interest cards after meeting some of our staff and student leaders who were there. Here is a picture to show just how big this was:

Big Howdy wasn't our only large event from the first week though, we had a few very successful game nights that we put on in the Res Halls on campus. This is how we met most of our new incoming freshmen. We were in various Res Halls each night, which allowed us to meet a lot of new freshmen each evening! One freshman I met in these first few weeks was a guy named Jared. He has been meeting one on one with me for the past few weeks, and has been a huge blessing in my life! Jared is very personable, and is extremely refreshing as most young people these days are not as good at friendship. This is something that I really hope I can help some students with. I know that one of my best gifts, is my ability to be a good friend to people. This value is dying in our culture, and the only way we can help that is to be friends to the younger people coming up in the world.

As the weeks of welcome came to an end, we had our first Friday Night Fellowship. This night was honestly rather stressful to me. I have been put in charge of the FNF team, and having my first time be on one of our largest nights was kind of overwhelming. I think other than how I was feeling, we kicked off the year really well, and introduced our theme "Steadfast" to the students with a great Sermon by Brandon and Rhett. The theme verse for the year is Lamentations 3:22-23 "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Which also is a fantastic hymn.

In the middle of all of these long days, was Labor Day. We had Labor Day off as a staff, which was a nice break after even us apprentices were working around 60 hours a week (with the main staff doing even more). The day after, we had our meeting out on Lake Lavon with the pastor of Wylie Northeast Church, John Von Runnen. He took us out on his boat, and we spent the time bonding and playing on the lake. We went out on the lake at about 7am, and we came back around noon. This day was a lot of fun, but still was a work day after we got back. I have never had a day that I was able to have that much fun, and also still get back to work and put in almost a full day. It was a day I will remember for a long time!

Last thing I will touch on, is my core. I am leading with a sophomore named Riley who just went to SICM this last summer. He is a really sweet guy, and we have a fantastic core of guys so far. I look forward to being able to develop my friendships with everyone in core, but especially Riley. We have had three meeting so far, and the amount of vulnerability and compassion that has been in all of these meetings is commendable. I am very excited to see what this year will give.

Looking forward to next month, we have our Fall Camp coming up, and some special events. I will write about all of those next time. Thank you all so much for supporting me and allowing me to be able to be a part of this work on UTD. It has been a lot, but I have never had a job in my life that has felt so fulfilling!

(UTD Staff post Lake Day)