Danielle's August Update

The FOCUS Staff just returned from a four day retreat in Port Aransas in order to build relationships as a team and prepare for the coming school year. We took time to reflect on our theme for this year: Living the Future. The permanent FOCUS staff just finished reading a book called Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God which was the inspiration for this idea. We are going to focus on teaching our students how to live in the "already/not yet," in which God has demonstrated his presence in us through the Spirit now, who is a guarantee for our inheritance of the kingdom in the future. Author Gordon Fee explains it better than I can: "Through Christ and the Spirit, God is already calling out a people for his name, who will live the life of the future in their present existence together as they await the consummation." Thinking through these truths has me really fired up for the year. I can't wait to see what the Spirit will do in and through our community!

2015-2016 FOCUS Staff at the beach

The Collin FOCUS staff has finally nailed down our leader (aka Corefa) team. We will have 10 women and 16 men leading small groups (cores) and reaching out to the campus this year. Our staff will divide up the leaders so that each of them can receive one-on-one mentoring from a staff member throughout the year. Leading corefas is probably one of my favorite things about doing campus ministry, so I'm incredibly excited about our team! Later this month we will have two opportunities to train our leaders in how to facilitate small groups and how to reach out to all the new students that will be flooding the campus in the next few weeks. Please be praying for our staff, our leaders, and our students that we can give 100% to reaching out to the lost and lonely that will be coming to our campus this semester. Also pray for the new and returning students that their hearts would be open to us and to the love of Jesus. School will officially start on August 24th which is only a few weeks away!

Lastly I wanted to mention our internship that started last Saturday. We have 14 new interns joining our staff  for the next ten months, 4 of which are interning at Collin College. I have the privilege of supervising one of these interns, Katelyn. This transition is a little bittersweet because half of the Collin staff from last year has either transitioned to another campus or a different ministry within the church. However, I'm super excited to get to work with a new team that is passionate about college ministry! If you're interested in hearing about their experience, check out their blogs to the right of this post!

I would like to thank you so much for your support and your prayers. I know that God has some amazing things planned for this school year and I'm excited that you will get to share in that with us. Please let me know if there's any way that I can serve you this year. I look forward to developing deeper relationships with all of you!

Much love!

Danielle