Denton TX College Missions

It's time for an update friends! First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years, and that you got to talk to or see people you love over the holidays. Nicole and I really enjoyed the time off during the break this year. We drove to New Mexico for a couple days with some friends and saw some really beautiful stuff (pictures below) and loved getting more time with Grant, Shayla, Kristen and Pedro. The rest of the break was so restful and enjoyable, and by the time the time off was coming to an end I was really looking forward to getting back to work and getting back at it! Previous breaks have been a lot more busy and I would come to the end of them almost as tired as before, but I'm really thankful that I think God is showing me how to rest and refresh well before getting back to the work to be done. WINTER CAMP This past weekend was our annual winter camp! We had our speaker John Stackhouse, a theologian who now teaches at Crandall University for the ...

Hello friends, Man, God has been so good this month! The last few weeks have been full of his grace and provision, so I want to take some time to celebrate with y'all! First of all we had our fall pizza theology a few weeks ago. We had Bill Watson from Criswell Seminary. He talked about the story of the Bible. Basically giving the students a more in depth look at the total narrative that God reveals to us in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It was such a good way for us to think deeply about the way that God has worked throughout that story, and what part of the story we're in now. Thinking about this gives us such a good idea of how we can be faithful to what God is doing now. I love getting chances for us to learn more about the Old Testament as well, so that was a highlight for me and for a lot of other people as well. Our speaker for Pizza Theology We had tons of students that were able to come this time, which was really exciting! Secondly we had o...

Outreach Hey guys, this month I wanted to take some time and give you some insight into one of the outreach events we did recently. Outreach is a time for us to engage the student body at large and offer friendship and invitations to people who stop and engage with us. This year we've been able to do a LOT of this at UNT thanks to a generous donor who gave us a large donation specifically for our outreach at UNT.  MIRROR MIRROR This was a campaign we did on our UNT campus for a couple of weeks this past month. We had two tents back to back, and in the first tent there was a mirror with the question "what do you see" on it, with a marker so that students could write down phrases connected to how they view themselves. The second tent had a big mirror with "what does God see" written at the top and scriptures that remind people how God views them and their worth in him. This went so well! We would stand at the end of the tents and talk to the people ...

Hello all Welcome back! UNT, NCTC and TWU FOCUS' are in full swing! Heres a look into what's been going on in my ministry lately: NCTC: This year in addition to being at UNT, I've been overseeing our NCTC campus, which is in Corinth, just right outside of Denton. NCTC is a small community college, where Aaron and the rest of the Denton staff have been working and building community for the past 3 years. It's been really cool to see this community grow over the past few years. I got to be involved my last year as a student as we were starting a FOCUS there. The campus has really changed. The first few weeks we were there, getting students to engage and talk was pretty challenging. The culture of these small community college is very much that of where students come, go to class, and leave without interacting with other students. Since we've grown our community there this has started to change. Students are now able to join and feel a part of a group of people p...

Hello It's been a busy month!! The transfer to the Denton campuses went smoothly, and Nicole and I are settling in to our new home. August meant a lot of excitement, and I mainly just wanted to share a lot of pictures that give you an idea of what has been going on in the ministry. All the new students move into their dorms, and we get to be there to help them and greet them and offer them friendship. Some of our students who were on the move in crew. Me in the background doing who knows what. Two of our apprentices on the outside here, Brittany and Ryan, and a student leader of ours Nate in the middle. They did awesome work on move in day.  Our first Friday Night Fellowship!  Here's our staff team! Most of them anyways. Brittany, Brittany, and Reagann not pictured.  NCTC!!!! This is one of our smaller communities at a local community college. It's so neat, and reminds me of working at Collin College.  The first month is always exc...

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 ...