February News
I have lots of great news to share with you this month! The students have been back in school for a few weeks now, and to kick off our semester we had one of our biggest events of the year: Winter Camp! We invite students from all the FOCUS ministries to retreat for a weekend to learn about God and to fellowship with each other. We had about 430 students attend. Our theme this year was "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, There is Freedom." We invited Brady Bobbink, the campus pastor from Campus Christian Fellowship at Western Washington University, to speak about the Holy Spirit. FOCUS has developed a partnership with CCF over the years, as we send our prospective student leaders to their leadership conference called Student Institute of Campus Ministry (SICM). I can't even begin to tell you how awesome Winter Camp was. God's Spirit really moved among our community that weekend! I'm not sure if you recall, but in November I wrote about a student at TWU that I met doing conversational evangelism. His name is Patrick and he identifies himself as agnostic. After that one conversation with Patrick on campus, I invited him to our Denton North Church meeting and he came! Since then he has been actively involved in a FOCUS small group at TWU and he was able to attend Winter Camp! I was so excited to have him there and to watch our students surround him with love. There were so many other stories like this from camp! Experiences like this make everything that we do worth it. We would not be able to have these wonderful opportunities without your prayers and support, so thank you immensely for that!
My biggest takeaway from Winter Camp was allowing and acknowledging the Spirit's work in my life and in the lives of those around me. Praying to the Spirit is not something that I ever did or knew that I was supposed to do. However, the more I have asked the Spirit to guide and direct my life, the more that I am aware of His presence. It is amazing to see the Spirit working in ways that I completely missed before. I am experiencing Him in a new way! One of the intern classes we are taking this semester is all about the Holy Spirit. I will keep you updated on the things I'm learning and the way that the Spirit is working on our campuses.
One of the ways I have seen the Spirit work is at the TWU campus. This past week I attended a TWU FOCUS meeting. They have been meeting once a month apart from UNT FOCUS as they were not an official organization on campus yet. However, they are continuing to grow at a very fast rate! My roommate and fellow intern, Sarah King, is heading up the TWU ministry. She asked us on Tuesday night to share our vision for the TWU campus. I felt the Spirit giving me a vision for that campus that I was able to share with the students. My vision is that TWU would be a place where people are excited to attend because the Spirit of God is there; that the atmosphere of the campus would change to a lively and friendly place; that students would not be depressed or lonely but would have spiritual friendships and community; and that the Christian ministries on campus would work together to win as many as possible. This vision has already begun: as of this week, FOCUS was accepted as an official, registered organization on campus! Praise God! We are so excited to be part of God's plan for the campuses!
Please continue to pray that students' lives will be changed and their hearts turned to God! Thank you for reading, and as always, thanks for all your support! Please let me know if there is anything I can pray about for you. Email prayer requests to danielle@anyfocus.org.
Much love!
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
Romans 15:13
.jpg) |
| Our entire group at Winter Camp |
My biggest takeaway from Winter Camp was allowing and acknowledging the Spirit's work in my life and in the lives of those around me. Praying to the Spirit is not something that I ever did or knew that I was supposed to do. However, the more I have asked the Spirit to guide and direct my life, the more that I am aware of His presence. It is amazing to see the Spirit working in ways that I completely missed before. I am experiencing Him in a new way! One of the intern classes we are taking this semester is all about the Holy Spirit. I will keep you updated on the things I'm learning and the way that the Spirit is working on our campuses.
One of the ways I have seen the Spirit work is at the TWU campus. This past week I attended a TWU FOCUS meeting. They have been meeting once a month apart from UNT FOCUS as they were not an official organization on campus yet. However, they are continuing to grow at a very fast rate! My roommate and fellow intern, Sarah King, is heading up the TWU ministry. She asked us on Tuesday night to share our vision for the TWU campus. I felt the Spirit giving me a vision for that campus that I was able to share with the students. My vision is that TWU would be a place where people are excited to attend because the Spirit of God is there; that the atmosphere of the campus would change to a lively and friendly place; that students would not be depressed or lonely but would have spiritual friendships and community; and that the Christian ministries on campus would work together to win as many as possible. This vision has already begun: as of this week, FOCUS was accepted as an official, registered organization on campus! Praise God! We are so excited to be part of God's plan for the campuses!
Please continue to pray that students' lives will be changed and their hearts turned to God! Thank you for reading, and as always, thanks for all your support! Please let me know if there is anything I can pray about for you. Email prayer requests to danielle@anyfocus.org.
Much love!
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
Romans 15:13
Comments
Post a Comment