An Amazing Start

 Hey all,

Here to update you on the first few weeks of Denton FOCUS. It's been a whirlwind, we had two weeks of doing events on campus, lunches with new students, tabling and giveaways, big night events outside on campus playing capture the flag or lawn games. The 6 foot beach ball made multiple appearances :). It's been a really awesome start to the year, and so far the students have been responding really positively. By and large it feels like the ones we are meeting are interested in engaging, many of them wanting to get involved and even the ones who aren't are less hostile than some of our previous years, so that's something we are praising God for! 

Our second TNF, last night. We got a bigger room thank goodness, our first week in a slightly smaller room had people lined up along the walls!

Our first two Thursday Night Fellowships have seen a bit under 300 students show up, which is awesome! (Fo context, last year our biggest Thursday night was in the low 200's) We're still in a season of growth it would seem and it was exciting to see all the students who the Lord had made open to joining us and wanting to be a part of the community. We can't wait to see what this year looks like as we start doing 1-1 bible studies and building close spiritual friendships in the small groups. 

Prayer Requests:

- Growth is exciting but comes with challenges! Our ministry is so much about relationships and people knowing each other. This is much more challenging when we grow so fast that the "small" groups are 20-25 people like some of ours are this year! Pray that we can still in those large small groups find ways to do personal discipleship and relationships well. 

- We've been trying to work with the on campus bureaucracy at UNT in particular to be more accommodating to some of what we are trying to do. While we're not always met with resistance per say, it is often difficult to get done what we need to without some sort of roadblocks or delays that are causing us headaches. We're in the middle of trying to push back on a policy they have for instance of students being able to gather in the common areas at the university without a "reservation." This is fairly absurd, students should be able to gather in campus common areas with their friends at their leisure, theyre paying for this, it's a state school, they're not being disruptive etc. It has made some of what we try to do to meet new students in the common areas harder to do. Pray for us as we try to get this policy changed! 

Here's an encouraging testimony from this year!