August 2023: Is Bucee Going to FOCUS?

Here's a late Valentine's greeting from my core. We attempted a heart. 

February flew by. I cannot believe how close spring break is. Continue praying for the ladies I met up with. I have been so lucky to be able to meet up with each one. Pray that they will know Christ better. Thank you for your prayer and support.
 I thought it would be fun to update you on how outreach has been going at UTD.

Outreach has been something I have been doing weekly since the fall. We did displays twice a week in the fall. We had one display on happiness and another on purpose. The point was to engage our campus with questions and varying opinions that would lead to a biblical thought on the topic. The setup was not complicated and lucky for us, the college campus is full of people who want to be heard. The coolest part was that students were engaging their campus, boldly inviting people to join in conversation. We just finished a display on anxiety that followed what we did in the fall. We invited people to leave an anxiety and take an encouragement.

The response on campus was pretty different each week. Overall, people thought the encouragements were nice but did not feel as comfortable talking about anxieties. Most people engaged by leaving an encouragement for someone else. I found that a lot of this display was FOCUS being visible. I am just learning a lot about being more creative while doing outreach. I ended up writing " You got this " and handing out that simple phrase to people as they went by.

This semester the apprentices for UTD have been challenged to plan bigger outreach events. In many ways, our group has been guinea pigs for outreach to see what works. I’m looking forward to our next big event: a science and faith panel.

The tag line for our event is, “Having faith in science and science in faith”. College can be a place where science and faith can seem to be opposed to each other. We are hoping to create a space to have an open discussion. Our setup will be thirty minutes of prewritten questions and thirty minutes of audience question. The audience questions will be gathered during the first half. Be praying for this event. Pray for open minds and pray against people who might come to be confrontational. I am excited to see what God does!