Skip to main content

Hey everyone! 

Here we are again: the end of another month. November means cooler temperatures and that this semester is close to the end. God has been so good as I reflect on this past month. I survived the rain, finished reading the Old Testament, and made some fun memories with my core. What a blessing it is to be at UTD! Thank you for your prayers and support. It means the world to me. 

One of my favorite memories from October is going to the State Fair with my core. We got eight free tickets from my girl Emma's mom. Her mom is a teacher, so that's why we got such a deal. Can you believe the state just hands out free tickets to students? It's amazing. The money we saved from the free ticket was put towards tasty fried food. Our plan was to each get some sort of fried food so everyone could sample. Everyone loved these little doughnut balls filled with Nutella and strawberries. We even went back to buy more before the Fair shut down for the night. Another food worth mentioning was the fried spaghetti. I did not take a photo because it was a marinara mess but it was pretty darn tasty. 
Going to the fair was also cool because some of my girls had never gone. Specifically, one girl is from South Carolina and had been asking about the fair before it started. She had done her research and had a list of what she wanted to see and the foods she wanted to eat. She is the reason I tried fried spaghetti. I enjoyed being able to experience the fair with someone so excited. 


I am able to meet with a few really sweet ladies. I wanted to highlight one of them. Emma has been such a rock in our group from the beginning. She is a transfer student who has been commuting to UTD. She's sporty and always has some sort of cute accessory, but what's really stands out to me is her desire to know God more. We started studying together in late September. We have been going over Jesus and different topics like grace and discipleship. I have enjoyed hearing her work through what it means to follow Jesus. What really got me about her is how she goes back over the verses herself. She is really making the study her own. Be praying she comes to trust Him more and that our friendship grows.


"For we are God's Handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" Ephesians 2:10

Comments

  1. Hey Emily! Glad to hear what's going on in your ministry. The State Fair is so fun and definitely a good way to expose your new friends to some Texas culture. I'm not sure how I feel about all the fried food though :)

    It sounds like God is doing something neat in Emma's heart. Thanks for sharing about her! Love you Emily!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

August 2023: Is Bucee Going to FOCUS?

Greetings from Buc-ee's Above is a photo from Buc-ee's on the fourth of July. We got to met the celebrity beaver while visiting my family.  For any of my out of state friends, Buc-ee's is a huge gas station and this beaver is their face and mascot. I just had to get a photo of these two with him.  Here's a photo from our church's dog event. The guy above's name is Mauricio. The dog he is holding is his. We had a good laugh that his beloved dog was a pampered shih Tzu. He and Graham have become great friends over the year. He will be leading in the fall. Pray for our men's side of the ministry. What happens every four years or so is that many of our people graduate. We are coming into this year with fewer men leaders. Pray for them to have courage and boldness to reach out on campus to their classmates, friends and whoever. I'm hopeful with guys like Mauricio that we will meet the people God wants us to this year.  Ministry-wise, we have begun the prepara...

August Update!

  This update is full of prayer requests and news! Let’s get started.  I just got back from our summer staff retreat with our entire staff team. One of the key parts I want to underline is: we have not had our entire staff together on a retreat since my apprentice year. Our staff has boomed in size because we are taking on nineteen apprentices this year. Nineteen. It’s exciting to experience a surge of new people and to see our team grow. I had a strange moment during the retreat where I realized some of these apprentices were students when I started back in 2018. Now, I get to partner with them in reaching our campuses this fall. I guess that’s what happens the longer you work at a place.  One of the most exciting updates I have is that we will be pioneering five new campuses this fall. Each team is focusing on a different campus. One thing that has blown me away during my time in FOCUS is how the Lord has worked on community college campuses. I remember visiting a Colli...

Big News at the Bottom.

 Happy New Year!  The photo above is of some of us at Inks Lake State Park during our staff retreat.  We made it to the new year! I hope you all had some time of rest during Christmas time. Since you last heard from me, our semester ended and students went home. At UTA, We did a Christmas devotional service and then ended with a party. At TCC, we went to Chick-fil-a and all got free sandwiches. I love the rhythms of ministry. We always end with parties and food.  Over our break, we rested. We read our assigned reading for the break; a fabulous book called To Love as God Loves by Roberta Bondi . If I could surmise what I learned,   it would be that many things i.e. our sin and our lack of humility get in the way of loving those around us. The book looked at how monastic church mothers and fathers tackled this common issue with prayer and seeking God. This book was what our retreat centered around. Graham preached the chapter about love. Also, We went to Hous...