Falling Into Place

As we rolled into September, the rush of events and outreach began to slow down, and for most of the month, we began to settle into a rhythm. For me, rhythm means a lot of meeting with the new members of our ministry, which has been super fun and encouraging this semester so far! It is an awesome job to get to be the open door of FOCUS, and it is even more awesome how many people have been willing to get time with me. 

The big deal for this month was our Fall Retreat. One weekend we took the members of our community to a retreat center outside of Cedar Hill, and gave them time to worship, discuss, and have fun with their small groups. It is an awesome way to really jumpstart those relationships because the 22 hours they get together at the Fall Retreat is only about an hour less than they would get just spending time together at their small groups. My Core (small group) had an awesome time together. Me and my co-leader Jared had about half of our guys out there with us that weekend, and the opportunities to hang out with and bond with them were very good. One of the guys I got to spend a lot of time with there was a guy named Warren. Warren has been in our ministry for two years since he joined as a Freshman. This year during fall retreat we were talking about his time in the ministry, and he mentioned to me that he thought he could grow a lot this year in how much he served in the body, and that he wanted to take the steps to do that. I was really encouraged to hear him be so ready to take another step in his involvement in our ministry. Since we got back from our Fall Retreat, he has joined our Greeting Team for our Friday Night Fellowship meetings, so praise God for his seriousness for his growth. The Retreat was overall very encouraging, and I am super grateful for the opportunity to get more time with my core guys! One request I do have for prayer, is to be praying our students learn to let their yes be yes and their no be no. We had many more students sign up than who came, and while we still had a successful event, it did effect us financially for this event. So just prayers that God covers that.

(Our group photo from Fall Retreat)

One more thing I want to mention is our upcoming Alumni Night. On November 17th, we are inviting all alumni of UTD FOCUS to join us for our service and see where the ministry you helped build has grown. It will also be a great opportunity for us to honor you all in how you helped create what we are cultivating now. All the information is in the graphic below. Thank you all for helping make this all possible. Getting to do ministry at UTD is such a gift to my life, and I thank God often for you all making this possible!