A Month of Challenges

Hello Friends! 

This past month has been a month full of challenges. Challenges on my character, bad habits that I have picked up, and challenges in learning how to better center and root myself in Christ. Overall, these are things that I continue to work on these areas in my life and seek accountability with the people who are around me. 

TNT afterevent. 

This past month we finished our Old Testament class! After reading all the books in the Old Testament so many things have become clear when it comes to God’s character and the connections can be made more easily with the New Testament. 

Something that we got to do with this OT class was listen to lectures from Iain Proven who is a professor of biblical theology at Regent College. The audio lectures were something that was challenging to listen to as they expanded me in ways that I never would have expected when it came to the things that I thought I knew about the OT. With that, we got the opportunity to do an online session of asking him questions that we wanted to get clarified. It was a neat opportunity to be able to do this and see his insights on the Old Testament that he has studied for many years. 

Our zoom chat with Iain Proven (the person with the headphones on) 

With the ending of that class, we now venture into two new classes which are financial stewardship and spiritual leadership. Though we have not yet started our spiritual leadership class, we have begun our financial stewardship class. In this class, we are going to be talking about views of money and how to have a healthy relationship with it. Some of the things we are going to be talking about are how to keep a budget, insurance, stocks, and many other things that regard money. 

I continue still with my Spiritual discipline in Mandy’s class. This week however I’m working on Examen. This process of seeing how God is moving in my every day and seeing where he working as well. Apart from that, we have been learning practical skills in this class on what to expect and how to not rush things in life. 

Richland Focus has been going well this past month. We finished our sermon series on a voice in the wilderness and how we use our voice in these times that full of many conflicting issues. With that series coming to an end we are now moving to deep diving into Luke 10, in learning how to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength. This something that we see a need for in our community of students as they learning to develop a love for God’s word and overall love for God. 

Doing a bit of playing before TNT

KFG (Keep Focus Growing) 

Every year Focus holds an annual fundraiser to help raise support for us to continue doing ministry for our students outside of our staff salaries. This fundraiser helps us do outreach activities, planting new campuses, administrative support, etc. This all goes towards helping our ministry grow and we continue to do the mission that God has given us in bringing Jesus to our college campuses. 

With that in mind, I want to invite you all to give to this ministry that has the mission of reaching out to college students on different campuses in the DFW area. I encourage you to give on Giving Tuesday that falls on Dec 1st as we also have a team of donors that are willing to do up to $42,000 in matching funds. If this is something that you are interested in doing feel free to contact me at any time for more information. 

Prayers 

I ask for prayer for our students as they learn to love God and his word. 

I ask for prayer for our staff as they are going through a season that requires discernment 

I ask for prayer for myself as learn to break these bad habits that I have developed over time and learning to rely on God and the people he has placed in my life at the moment. 

A Month of Learning

 Hi Everyone! 

This past month of September was a month filled with learning. From learning the dynamics of know how to balance a schedule to talking about difficult/intriguing topics in the classes that I am taking, there was much to learn. 

Some of my core girls. (R-L: Erika, Haylee and me)

In our Evangelism class, there was much to discuss and reflect on for me. One of these things is learning how to be bold and reach out to people in a non-constructive way) Apart from that, we have also been discussing how do we overcome the obstacles when it comes to cultural differences when reaching out to people. These question have been getting me to think deeply and more intentionally about how I approach Evangelism or reaching out and inviting students into ministry. 

The other class is Maturing with Mandy. Mandy is the women's director of Focus and she does this class for the apprentices for us to learn life skills and grow to become more mature. In her class, one of things that we're learning how to do is getting organized and creating schedule for ourselves. I hate to admit it, but this is something that is I'm finding difficult to do, but I've slowly comes to pace where I can balance the priorities that I need to do. 

Another thing we're working on in her class are spiritual disciplines. The best way I can describe a spiritual discipline is it being a practice where you can deepen and reflect on your relationship with Jesus. This is being put together with a book that has different exercises on how you can spend time with God and strengthen each discipline. I recently began to do the discipline of contemplation ( in the sense of thinking about the experiences that you've had in your relationship with God) and doing the exercises have been a restful time for me. 

Lastly, our Old testament class is almost over, but we still have much left to learn. As we are reading the old testament, I've come to learn and realize how idolatry is a big problem with the Israelites. They go back and forth and it amazes me how God has so much grace for them. We just finished reading Ezra-Nehemiah and these books were very interesting in how the exiles began to treat the law in taking it to the extreme after coming back to Jerusalem many years later. 

Learning the story of the bible with this class, has also been a great experience because I feel like it teaching how to read and love God's word in a whole new light. 

Richland Update

Richland has been doing good this month. Though we have mostly had returning coming consistently, we have had a few new people come a few times! The students have been so great to have around and it has been really encouraging to also learn how some of them want to take steps on how to lead in our ministry.

At Thursday Night Thunder

Some students at the Pizza Theology watch party

On the 27th of September, we started the first part of an event we call Pizza theology. This is a time where we deep dive into a topic and talk about it with our students. This semester our topic was "In it not of it" how to think like a Christian in our society. They tackled some of tough topics and laid the foundation of how to begin thinking about topics such as abortion, BLM, society and what should be public and private. 

Prayer 

Pray for Richland College, as we continue being online and reaching out to students and will continue to be online in the Spring semester as well. 

Pray for our students, as they try to navigate and think through online school and the presidential election that is coming up. 

Pray for me, as I learn how to be bold and more outspoken. 

Thank you for taking the time to read and let me know how I can be praying for you.