I want to take a moment to thank you all for supporting me through a year with FOCUS! It has truly been a weird and unexpected year, but I'm so excited to stay on and see what else God has in store for me! As campuses are geared to open back up next year, I'm amped up in anticipation to see how He can use FOCUS in new ways. The pandemic was a soft reset and gave us time to evaluate what we do and how we do it and I think we're prepared to hit the ground running once they let us back on campus! Thank you, thank you, thank you for your partnership in all of this!
What a beautiful month it was! Though, it was one of the busiest for me as we wrapped up the end of the year. I took this picture out my bedroom window. The beauty of nature is rarely fully captured on camera, but it helps to remind me that despite the chaos and the busyness of life, that God is good!
For our New Testament class, we had a Zoom Q&A with former Regent College professor, Rikk Watts. His insight into the New Testament, his zeal for the Lord, and his keen sense of humor made him a joy to talk to!
As I had been attending our church services in person, on the lawn, I did not know what our online streamed services looked like. So I decided to hop on while at the church. You can see me in the grey sweater and black joggers (directly below the basketball hoop in the picture). Though there's a bit of a delay so it doesn't look like I'm on my phone yet!
One of the last classes that we took for the year was called Elmer Gantry class. Not that the class was about the book, but moreso because we had to read the book for class. This was a picture that we took on one of the last days — after a year of taking classes together! And no, it's not your eyes.. the picture came out blurry.
My good friend, Meg, celebrated her 22nd birthday! I snapped this picture as she was posing for a different picture. She graduated with her bachelor's this year! You can see Moose's nose pop in on the right. :-)
Later in the month, our church decided to test-run moving our services back indoors as the CDC came out with new guidelines and the temperature began to rise. It was definitely strange and surreal to see people inside the halls chatting away.. it seemed so familiar. But here I am holding a baby in the back of the auditorium.
That same Sunday, there were some flash flood warnings in the area! The house that I'm in backs into a creek which is almost always very shallow and down a natural embankment. I took the 'before' picture at a later date to compare how high the water got that day!
Our church got broken into one Sunday night — some burglars threw a rock through a window. Thankfully, the motion detector tripped the alarm and they didn't get much.. however they did swipe a number of keys to the building. As such, we had to re-key all of the outer doors. A key a minute sounds very fast.. until you have to make around 50. That's when you grab your lawn chair from the trunk of your car and set up shop in the Walmart entryway. Embarrassing or not, I'm not standing around for an hour waiting for keys to be cut!
The next day we had Paul Austin, the pioneering director with Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, come speak to our staff about how to pioneer campuses for our ministry. We are currently on about 10 different campuses.. and next year we're looking to start on 5 new campuses.
I just liked these photos. As an exercise during the pioneering bootcamp, we had to outline a human body and write some key information about the campus that we are going to (or are already at); things to keep in mind to help us strategically plant ourselves on campus.
I went to go see a local theater production of Beauty and the Beast, with one of the teens from church cast as Belle. Of course, many other people from church came out in support — including these little ones.
FOCUS holds large group gatherings at CARE Church over the summer; they're a local church that partners with our ministry frequently. During the summer, all of the different campuses that FOCUS is on come together. They were so sweet to put us on their electronic sign out front!
This is me and Stephanie at a friend's wedding! It's getting to be wedding season again.. (and soon to be our wedding.)
This is the group of guys that I get to live with over the summer. They are all a part of, or came through, FOCUS. We went to Top Golf for roommate night and had a blast. I'm so blessed to get to know them and live with them for a spell! (You'll find a video of how good I am at golf at the end of my blog.)
This is Stephen. I've been meeting with him pretty consistently for a meal a week, for a little while now. We went to Waffle House for breakfast this day. He just graduated from UTD and I love getting to spend time with him! He recently smoked a brisket for a graduation party for a few of our friends to celebrate the grads from this year (including himself). But that's just who he is! Very sweet and thoughtful and an incredible cook!
During Summer FOCUS (on a Thursday), we had time to honor and pray for the 7 campus ministers who will be leaving our staff and transitioning to work in a different field. It's always a bittersweet moment to say goodbye.
The next day (Friday), we got to spend time as a whole staff team to reflect on the year, and again, to honor those who will be leaving. It's been very rare this year to have everyone together, so it was a good time.
Here are (almost) all of the apprentices from this year together at Six Flags over Memorial Day weekend (plus Stephanie). It has been a wild year and I'm so thankful for the time I've gotten to have with them.
As promised, here is a video that my roommate took of how good I am at golf. Anyone up for a game?
Comments
Post a Comment