The new school year has officially begun, and it has been such a busy month getting prepared for it. Our new FOCUS interns officially started on August 1st . We have 5 interns working on three different campuses this year, which is so exciting! I am very excited because I get to work directly with Jamiann at UTD, and then also get to spend some time with Brianna and Kelly helping them some while they work at Collin College and the University of North Texas. I cannot wait to see what God is going to do through them this year.
This month has definitely been busy. We spent a couple of days doing a staff retreat with the interns just getting to know them and building our team. I feel like that was such a great weekend and I personally left encouraged and excited to work on this team this year. After the retreat, our UTD staff spent some time getting ready for the students to arrive and planned some activities for the Freshmen. The Freshmen moved in 5 days before the upperclassmen and there really was not a lot for them to do the first few days they were there. We put on several events that week and all were well attended so we were able to meet so many new students.
The fruit of all of that work has started to show since we had our first large group meeting last week. We had about 150 people at our first Friday night of the year! We also had about 80 women sign up to say they wanted to be contacted about being invited to a small group (Core). This year we currently plan to have 5 women’s Cores which will meet at different times throughout the week and are student led. So with all the students that signed up and with all the students the Core Facilitators met during Welcome week, our women’s Cores are going to all be big. This will present some challenges but is so exciting! This year, I get to work with some of the women Core facilitators to make sure they have all the resources they need to be successful. I am so thankful that my dear friends Christa Smith and Amy Knoles will also help with some of them as well.
Please be praying that we can have great cores and that the women are able to build relationships where they can grow in their relationship with God. Please continue to pray that we are able to make disciples on all of our campuses this year!
