April Updates

This is it! April was the second to last month of the Apprenticeship. There's a sense of a season in my life ending, and I want to share some of what's been going on in my life and in the ministry with you guys.

April, like much of the past year, felt so short. I mentioned in my last post about our Spring Showcase, which was the fundraiser for our students going up to SICM in Washington for a week of training in how to do ministry to your peers on campus. SICM in happening NEXT WEEK! I'll be going up there for the week as well, along with many of the rest of our staff, to bus them around and learn alongside them for the week, so please be in prayer for that week. This is a major part of the fuel for our new student leaders, their week will be spent learning so much and spending time building bonds with other future student leaders that they will be working alongside of. Pray for safety for the trip, and pray for the students to be energized and ready to absorb what they're learning throughout the week. Next month I'm sure I'll have pictures and stories to share for that. A real God deal though, all of our students going to SICM were able to fully raise all of the financial support they needed to go on this trip about two weeks ago, so praise God for that! That Spring Showcase event at the beginning of the month really gave them a huge boost, and many of them worked hard fundraising through other means in the past couple months. I'm so thankful for them and their dedication to invest in learning and growing in order to reinvest into other students and people's lives in the future.

This past week was the last week for a lot of things. One was my peer team meetings. These are the weekly one on one meetings I get with four of our student leaders who lead our mens small groups (corefas). I've really loved those times with those guys this past semester, and I'll definitely miss it. A couple of them will be around next year, and one is transferring to the UNT campus (go eagles) so that's exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing what God continues to do through each of their lives.

Core also wrapped up this week. For our last core, my co-leader and I decided to do a combined core with the other men's core at Preston Ridge, and it was a really neat way to end the year. One of the guys' parents was kind enough to let us use their house for a cookout and worship night, and each of the guys had a chance to relay some things God had been putting on their minds recently. It's been so good to see the relationships that have been formed out of these small groups, and see God changing these guys in various ways over the past couple of semesters.

Tonight is our last Thursday Night Focus for the semester, and then tomorrow night we'll have a banquet where we get to honor our student leaders and share stories with each other from the year. We're really excited about it and it'll be a good way to end off the year.

With so many of these things wrapping up, I'm reminded that just because things will look different over the next couple of months with the semester being over, God is still nonetheless very much working in our lives. He's not on break, he's still good, and he's still got it. So as a staff we encourage each other and our students to very much continue as well. There will still be people meeting one-on-one and studying the bible, still small groups of students meeting together and sharing life together. If anything, without their classes, many of them will have more time on their hands to spend with people in the community, so that's always one of my favorite things about summer in years past. So please pray for our students to find rest and also continue to be purposeful in their seeking of God and intentional in their ministry to others over this summer.

Part of what I'll be doing over the summer is support raising for next year as I move onto staff. Please be praying for this effort, that I would be faithful to working hard to raise the support I need to, and that the people I talk to would be open and consider joining what God is doing on campuses in DFW. Thank you guys so much for your continued support and prayer already, and if there's anything I can pray for you for, please let me know.

-Ryan