Danielle's August Update
The FOCUS staff has been diligently preparing for our new school year all summer and it's finally approaching! We just returned from our staff retreat where we spent three days bonding as a team, reading and reflecting on a spiritual book, and making plans for the year. Our Denton team also recently spent a weekend making plans for our specific campuses and getting to know each other better. This year we have a new apprentice (intern) joining our team! Her name is Brittany Tydlacka and we are so thrilled to have her! We have officially changed the name of our internship program to apprenticeship because we believe it more accurately reflects their role as ministers in training.
I would like to share a student testimony with you so that you can see the impact of your support for our ministry. Here is one from a student in our Richland ministry:
"I recently went through a period of situational depression. There wasn’t an entire day that went by where I was happy with my place in life. Some days, I seemed jovial and was up for a good laugh. Other days, however, were full of sadness and discontent. I remember I broke down and cried three times back in 2014. I even almost committed suicide. I had been born and raised in a Christian family, but my faith often felt lacking quite a bit. Something I’ve often heard from my mother was that you’ve got to do your part in order for God to do His. I think God was telling me to do my part by joining FOCUS. FOCUS has given me a sense of community that I don’t think I could find anywhere else. I think it has helped me enhance my faith in God and see that with Him, all things are possible. It’s helped me to expand my circle of friends and, more importantly, renewed and restored my faith. I think there’s still some work for me to do to get closer to God, but being a part of FOCUS has helped me to gain some traction on that front. As I move forward with life, I pray that my faith becomes more solid than it was in the past."
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| L to R: Aaron, Miriam, me, Matt (my husband!), Brittany, and Cody |
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| All the apprentices for the coming year |
"I recently went through a period of situational depression. There wasn’t an entire day that went by where I was happy with my place in life. Some days, I seemed jovial and was up for a good laugh. Other days, however, were full of sadness and discontent. I remember I broke down and cried three times back in 2014. I even almost committed suicide. I had been born and raised in a Christian family, but my faith often felt lacking quite a bit. Something I’ve often heard from my mother was that you’ve got to do your part in order for God to do His. I think God was telling me to do my part by joining FOCUS. FOCUS has given me a sense of community that I don’t think I could find anywhere else. I think it has helped me enhance my faith in God and see that with Him, all things are possible. It’s helped me to expand my circle of friends and, more importantly, renewed and restored my faith. I think there’s still some work for me to do to get closer to God, but being a part of FOCUS has helped me to gain some traction on that front. As I move forward with life, I pray that my faith becomes more solid than it was in the past."
-Miles Morris, Richland College, Mass Communications
These are the kinds of students that we are reaching out to, and that will begin to flood our campuses in the next two weeks. This is exciting work! Please be in prayer for the new students that God is sending to Denton. Pray that our student leaders are welcoming and show the love of Jesus to every person they meet. Pray that God gives our staff wisdom and direction on where he wants our ministry to go this year.
Thank you so much for deciding to partner with us in this work! We can't wait to see the things God does this year. Thanks for reading!
Much love,
Danielle
Danielle
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