January-Winter Camp

The biggest thing that I want to tell you about is Winter Camp!  It was so amazing!  I wish you could have been there!

This year we chose a new camp for us, Sky Ranch in Van, TX.  This camp was hands down the most well run camp I have ever been to.  The food was great, the staff was great, the facilities and cabins were very well kept, and there were so many activities for everyone to do during free time.  On Monday morning the even had a huge breakfast buffet for us.  I felt so spoiled!

As great as that was, God was really moving there.  We had about 370 people come to camp this year from all 4 of our campuses!!  Geoff Mumley from Campus Christian Fellowship in Bellingham, Washington was our speaker this year.  God really spoke through him at camp.  He spoke about a New Kingdom.  That was such a great topic since one of Jesus’ main messages was about the Kingdom of God and it encompasses everything in our faith. 

Our praise teams from all of our campuses did such a great job. We had Violas and Violins and great singers who really lead us in worship to God.  God has been so good to us.

God really changed people at camp.  There are several students who are trying to decide if they are ready to make a commitment to make Jesus Lord and camp really helped with that.  Please, please be praying for them.  Other students just got a bigger vision for God’s kingdom and our place in that.  There have been several students invite their roommate or classmates to core in the past couple weeks.  Our cores have really started growing and new one on one studies have begun!  The thing that I am most encouraged about is that it is the newer people who got studied with last semester who are studying with the new people.  God’s Kingdom is growing and it is so exciting to see it. 

Thank you so much for your partnership in this ministry.  Without you, we couldn't do this kind of ministry.  Thank you so much for investing in the vision.  I know that God wants to do great things on the campuses here in the metroplex.  

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  I pray that 2013 is a great year for you.  I know that 2012 was another good year for Andrew and me.  God has just given us so many blessings and is continuing to work in our lives.

December was a great month for our campus ministry.  We had a Christmas party for our ministry at the Northeast Church.  Our theme was “Comet Christmas” since we are the UTD comets.  Our decorations were space themed as was our photo booth.  We had some appetizers for them to eat while they spent some time socializing and then the entertainment was provided by our cores.  Our cores performed a Christmas song and had some specific rules to go along with our Comet Christmas theme.  Here is the link to the video one of our students took if you would like to see it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pi1IA_N8nU&feature=youtu.be

One of the most exciting things for me of the semester is to see the impact FOCUS is having on our students and ex-students parents.  Jamiann’s dad was baptized last week and is fired up about Jesus.  Jamiann was a student at Collin and led core there for 2 years before transferring to UNT to start a campus ministry with a few other students there.  Last year she did our FOCUS internship and had an amazing experience doing that.  Jamiann is now a youth minister a Northeast.  Jamiann’s dad has been coming to Northeast and Ronnie studied the Bible with him for the past few months.  FOCUS was able to reach Jamiann and then the church, her dad.  I am so thankful for the partnership of Northeast and FOCUS!

Also this past week, Griffin, a student at Richland was able to baptize his mom!!  Travis Jones met Griffin at Richland, studied the Bible with him and baptized him over a year ago.  Griffin’s mom came to his baptism where Brandon invited her to Northeast.  Kristen Chapman and I met Leanne at Northeast and started studying the Bible with her.  She was baptized as an infant which wasn't her choice so she decided to be baptized and confess Jesus as her Lord!  Leanne already has a vision for studying with other people.  Again, I love the support Northeast provides.  Leanne has a great church to serve in and grow in.

Lives are changing everyday and entire families are being impacted for eternity because you have chosen you give and support us.  Thank you seems completely inadequate for how I feel.  May God bless you richly!

Love,

Mandy

November at UTD

November was such a great month for me personally and for our ministry at UTD.  At the beginning of the month, Kelly, who was a FOCUS intern up at UNT last year and alum of UTD, baptized one of the international students in the core she participates in.  Enjoy the video!  

Bringing people to know Jesus is what it is all about!  There are so many studies still going so I can’t wait to see what God is going to continue to do.  Please continue to pray for all of these studies.  I know with all my heart that God answers our prayers that we lift up on behalf of people.  Jesus is changing lives.

Each week on Friday night at FOCUS we have had students share their testimony of how God has made them new.  This month I think that I literally wanted to cry (happy tears) after each one of them.  All of the students who have shared so far are student leaders this year.  What blows me away is how God continues to work in so many people lives, changing them to be more like Him, year after year.  Some learn to overcome the fear of shyness and selfishness and others get a heart for evangelism, but in all of them the Spirit is working. 

A couple weeks ago we got students from all 4 of our campuses together to do a lecture on sex and marriage. We called it Pizza Theology because we served pizza for dinner.  Ronnie and Brandon delivered that and did such an awesome job.  The week before and after that Casey and I did sermons on dating.  I think that over the years, FOCUS has done some really challenging sermons on dating.  The fruit of the challenging sermons and dating culture has been some really awesome marriages.  I pray that with pizza theology and these dating sermons, our current students will catch a vision of dating in such a way to have an amazing marriage.  Please lift up our students as they date, our current culture makes dating so difficult.

Thanksgiving was such a great break for me.  I feel well rested and able to tackle the busy month of December.  

With December here and the Christmas break ahead of us, I would ask that you especially pray for students as they go home.  For many of them, going home is great.  I have already heard of a handful of students though who are really worried about going home for a month.  Home is not a good place for them and they don’t have the Christian community there that they do here.  Please pray that these students will continue to seek God and can grow closer to Him over the break.

I have so many other things that I could tell you about but this is getting long.  God is so good!

October Update (Because I am telling you about October.)

As each month goes by, there are so many things that I could share with you.  When I sit down and reflect on the month I can see all of the things that God is doing around me.  If I shared all of them, this would be a very, very long blog!

At the beginning of the month, Brandon and the campus pastor from Baptist Student Ministries at UTD, Beth, planned a meeting to get all of the campus ministers at UTD together.  That meeting was so encouraging to me because there isn’t a spirit of competitiveness for anyone’s ministry but a spirit of unity.  On a secular campus, unity is so important if we are going to reach this campus and show them Jesus.  There are so many students who haven’t been reached yet at UTD so I know God is going to do great things here.

In the middle of October, we got all the women leaders together for a meeting at La Madeline.  There are almost 30 of us when you get us all together!  We had desserts and then we went around and shared good news of what was going on in our personal life and ministry.  Every one of the women shared good news and that would be too long to write here.  But God is working in so many ways big and small.  We have international students who are asking to study the Bible during their first meeting with a corefa, non-Christian students getting to experience Christian community and friendship, women in cores opening up and sharing their lives with each other, new people wanting to be involved in studying the Bible with others in their core, and one of my favorites, 2 sophomores who are planning a mission trip for our ministry this summer because they had it on their heart to do so.  I really could go on and on!!

Please, Please keep praying for FOCUS.  When you think of the almost 20,000 students at UTD we are only scratching the surface of what is possible.  God has answered our prayers this year but I know he wants to do even greater things.  As the year goes on students get distracted, busy, and stressed.  Please pray for protection of those who are seeking God and wisdom and protection for the corefas.  Your prayers are so critical to the work we do!  God is so good and answers our prayers!

September News from UTD

I cannot even begin to explain how excited I am about FOCUS at UTD this year!  On Friday nights in our large group we have had such a diverse group of people still coming.  The week before last, I looked around the room and over 30% of the people there were international students.  Many of them have no experiences of Christianity until recently.  We have had American students from various places on their spiritual journey.  Some are atheist or agnostic exploring Christianity and some with a strong faith just looking to be part of a Christian community.

This diversity is also flowing into our cores.  One core had 4 Americans and 15 women from China who all want to study the Bible! Another one of our women’s cores has only a couple of Christians and about 8 who are not yet Christian.  I could go on with so many stories from cores.  I could not be any more proud of this group of leaders and really ask you to continue to pray for them.  The needs they are filling are great and I know they feel such a burden because they love the women in their cores.

We had 153 people sign up to come to Fall Camp which we just got back from today.  I CAN NOT wait to hear the stories from the corefas about how people were impacted there.  I will share those with you when I write again.  It was a great weekend though!

I want to leave you with a scripture and some thoughts on it that we read in time of worship, prayer, and communion last night at camp. Revelation 4:9-5:14.  Renee Doty read part of this aloud to us last night and it brought such powerful thoughts to my mind and heart.  I wish I could share them all with you but I will keep it really short.  John weeps because no one is worthy to open the scroll when the elder tells him not to weep because the Lion of Judah has triumphed.  How powerful to think of Jesus as the Lion of Judah.  He is so great, powerful, strong, and fierce.  All sorts of thoughts like that come to my mind when I think of the Lion. BUT, when John turns to look at him he sees a Lamb looking as if it had been slain. This has to be one of the most powerful images to me in the Bible.  The elders sing a new song to him because he is worthy and with his blood he purchased for God all people.  Our God, the Lion of Judah, is a slain Lamb.  We serve a God like no other.  We serve a crucified God and we lay our crown before him.  “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!”

I am literally so humbled by how great, awesome, marvelous and merciful that God is.  There are no words that can be used to describe Him.  The fact that He chooses to use me, sinful, imperfect, me to do great things, literally blows my mind.  I am so unworthy of the Love and Salvation he gives to me.  Ronnie was discussing Ephesians 3:20-21 yesterday and this really resonated with me.  The passage says:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within in us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen   Ephesians 3:20-21

The thing that is so unbelievable and so immeasurable and that God can Love and Save us and still use us.  That is truly unbelievable that he is so good.

I say all of that to say that He is doing so many good things through the prayers and financial support of so many of you.  I really do not know where to start, so many good things have happened this month.

A couple of weeks ago, Melissa, a senior in our ministry was baptized by one of her good friends and an alum of our ministry, Brittney.  Through the friendship of Brittney and others, it has been so neat to see God completely change Melissa’s life.  I literally cannot imagine our ministry without her.  She brings joy where ever she goes!

We have gotten through welcome week and all the events that go with it.  Our corefas have met so many people!  Their hard work really showed when we had around 150 people show up our first Friday night.  It was such a diverse group.  God is so Good!  Our small group leaders have been so busy calling people and inviting them to core.  I cannot wait to see the fruit of that.

These past few weeks have been busy but now the exciting part starts.  We get to start investing in the people we meet.  Please pray for us as we do that.  And pray that God will give me what I need to be great leader because I am so unworthy to do this.

August...Almost time for school to start!!!

A brand new school year starts in a couple of weeks which is so exciting.  We have really spent the summer planning for it.  We just had a staff retreat this past weekend with our brand new staff for the year!  It was so great.  We were able to spend time singing, getting to know each other, and thinking about our ministry.  My favorite thought from the weekend was our new theme from Revelation, Everything New.  God has a bigger plan for redemption than I can even comprehend.  It is really encouraging and got me really excited.  We were also asked to journal the question “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” which also got me thinking.  We have nothing to fear and fear often paralyzes us.  We can’t do God’s work like that. 

    

God has blessed us with such great people who really do want to pour into students to see more people reached.  Our new staff at UTD will be Casey, Sirak, Courtney, and me.  All four of us are alumni from UTD, know the campus and have a heart for it.  I am so excited about this year because we have 16 women who will be Core facilitators (group leaders).   Most of them are brand new Corefas who will be back again next year.  The thing I am most excited about are our 6 women Peer Team leaders who will mentor the Corefas!  Our small group leaders are going to be supported very well!

Right now I feel like I have so many things to ask you to pray about.  Please pray for Sirak and Courtney as they start their new internship at UTD.  They are going to be spending time learning God’s word more deeply, learning to preach, will lead peer team and all the little nuances of campus ministry.  Pray for Casey as he starts working at UTD again after being at Collin for several years.  Pray for our new student leaders as they begin to meet new people.  Pray for all of the new people on campus that they can know the Lord God through His Son Jesus!