Denton TX College Missions

Hey All, Summer is coming to a close, which means fall semester is right around the corner, which is a super exciting time! I don't have a lot of updates from the past month, since most of my work time has been spent fundraising to prepare financially for the rest of this year. Thank you again to those of you who have so generously consented to or decided to start supporting campus ministry, and Nicole and I. I do have some very urgent prayer requests though, some of you know about these already. My heart is heavy about these situations and for these students. We need to be in prayer for them, so please join me in that. A student of ours recently attempted suicide, and another recently checked into a care facility for suicidal thoughts. Both are getting care and help, but please be in prayer for these two students. A student in our ministry recently experienced the death of his father by cancer and this past month, his older brother committed suicide. Please lift this fami...

Hey all, I wanted to do something a little bit different this month. We're in the middle of fundraising season currently, working hard to make new contacts with people who can support us as campus missionaries the rest of the year. People like you, and it's a season that reminds me of how grateful I am for each of you who support me. Thank you. So instead of giving you the ins and outs of that and boring you too much, I wanted to share these four stories from fours students across our FOCUS campuses about how God has been working in their life in college. I hope they're as encouraging to you as they are to me.  "I first became involved with FOCUS when I was just starting out at Collin College. I had been living in Nigeria for a few years, so I was walking into a college experience where I didn’t know anyone. I worried a lot about not being able to find any meaningful friendships while I was there. So it came as a surprise when some old friends of mine, Loré ...

Hello all! Another school year has come to a close here, and this one marks the end of working at the Collin Campuses and moving over to work at UNT TWU and NCTC in Denton. More on that to come in the next few months, but first let me update you guys on some of what's been going on here the last couple months. The three pictures above are from an outreach time at our Spring Creek Collin College campus. Our outreach time there has been particularly strong the past few weeks, as the students have really taken that on and have been showing up. This was a day where we were outside talking to students and inviting them to come hang out with us and have conversation. This has been a successful way over and over of getting past people's initial hesitancy to engage in something more serious right off the bat, and has led to a lot of people coming into community where they can start studying the bible and joining a small group led by our student leaders. God has been se...

Hello all! It's been a little bit since I last got to update you guys, and a lot of things have happened. I'm excited to share with you guys that this fall, I'll be transitioning to the FOCUS staff team in Denton, back at UNT!! They're undergoing some transitions this fall, with their campus director, Matt, who used to be my mentor while I was a student there, moving to the dallas area to work on staff with our University of Texas at Dallas team. Since there was a need for another male staff member in Denton, after prayerful consideration, Nicole and I feel really good about committing to go up there and work at that campus for at least the next three years. It's definitely a bitter-sweet deal, Collin and Plano have both felt so much like home. I LOVE working with the staff team up here and with the students, so I'm really going to miss them and the environment up here, but I'm also so excited to bring what I've learned and grown in back up to Denton, a...

Winter Camp 2018 was this past weekend!! Around 650 students from across all the FOCUS campuses made it this year, and even some visitors from campuses outside DFW! God blessed us with Geoff and Jessica Mumley as our speakers this year at camp, who came down from our sister ministry CTF up in Bellingham, WA where we send our SICM students every year for training. I've heard nothing but hugely positive things from our students, and this year felt very special. Geoff and Jessica taught our students on this theme we've been focusing on this year of being sent. They did a great job, and I'm confident God's spirit was working through them to bring realization of just how important and neat our part in being kingdom bringers to those around us is. We had a really neat communion time, where we had a chance to remember Jesus, then go around the room and remind each other of truths that Jesus has told us and give encouragements to different people.  Joseph and Ma...

Hey all, Been a little while, and I wanted to check in with you all and say hello. This past week wrapped up the semester for students at Collin. It was a more stressful week for them as they prepared for finals, but less so for us on staff as this time of the year typically means things get a little less hectic. Here's a few highlights from the past month or so: I briefly mentioned Pizza Theology, that we had in November. We had Bill Watson, a professor at Criswell College (a local divinity school) come, and he taught for four hours to about 400 of our students on the Sermon on the Mount. One of the key things he taught that has really affected so many of the students I've been meeting with since is the idea that God's laws or rules that he gives to us are meant to act as boundaries for us to eventually come to the point where we love him and love the people around us well. So he doesn't tell us not to murder or lie or cheat or steal from our neighbor because l...

On Healing This month I have been reflecting a fair amount on healing and the role that it plays in people's lives. We've been doing a sermon series on this idea of "being sent" by God into the world and how much we get to be a part of God bringing life to people in various ways when we allow ourselves to be on mission with him. We've also been going through the book of Mark chapter by chapter in something we call Discipleship class. Every Friday from 12-2, about 25-35 students from our ministry gather in an upstairs room in the library and participate in unpacking a chapter of Mark at a time at a higher learning level. The goal is to help us (students and staff alike) learn who Jesus was by watching his life unfold, and in some sense to "grow up" in our faith by learning about it at a graduate level. We teach this class out of the NIV application commentary, and teaching through some of this stuff has made me so amazed at Jesus all over again. Beca...