March Update!

Hello! I hope everyone's March is starting off well. I like to think my ministry update contributes to your joy each month. Thank you again for supporting me in ministry. I am so thankful that I am able to meet with students full-time. Seriously. So amazing. 

 A Glimpse of College Life: 

A pile of Chick-fil-a on top a trashcan. 

This always makes me laugh, seeing the ginormous mound of bags. I just hope this pile of trash brings you back to your college days. Let me get started on my update!

Showcase was awesome! Our amazing tech people made a link to where you can watch it from the comfort of your home for free (of course, there’s an option to give… but that’s beside the point). I was incredibly proud of everyone who preformed. Most notably was one of our TCC students Eldrian! He has really jumped into our community. He has been playing for our worship team at UTA. That's probably one of my favorite parts of reaching out to a community college close to Arlington. Our ministries can interact. Also, UTA was well represented with four of our students preforming. I found it to be so special that our campuses farther out from Dallas were highlighted. Our ministry’s vision is to make Jesus known across DFW, so it's special when people can see students coming from as far as Arlington for an event. Yay to all of our Tarrant county people! Here's the link: https://anyfocus.org/showcase/

The photos above are from Showcase. It was special to have our students who are new to FOCUS experience our larger community. Patty was blown away by it all. 

This past month has been full of learning for me. Not only am I in a class, but I have had two books I’ve been juggling for our staff book club and our leader team. I think God is funny because all of my readings relate to each other. In my development class,  I am learning how children learn and grow with the major influence of their caregivers. I see this as an undergirding to everything else I am reading. It's interesting to be reading on how we teach children how to think about the world around them. My book for book club is called Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey and we are reading a book called Live No Lies by John Mark Comer. I would highly recommend both of these books (I included a life span textbook for fun lol).

Love Thy Body is a very smart book on addressing major topics like gender, hook up culture and assisted suicide to name a few. The author is arguing that the Christian worldview actually presented a more healthy and whole understanding of the body. Which I have found has complimented our book, Live No Lies so well. Comer’s book addresses the schemes of the devil being to get us to believe lies. Little lies that culminate into wonky worldviews. We had our first discussion on this book with our students and it was informative hearing what was resonating with them. We really are in a society where has influencers changing their appearance through apps and subtlety telling us how to think. 

I am excited to see where our discussions go as we think through what lies we have been told by society and how might Christ redeem those.

Here's a photo from our TCC core. This was the day before the ice day. I was encouraged by how many students came.

We were celebrating a birthday in our staff meeting. Sarah took a couple of the extra party hats. 

This is a creeper shot of my peer team. Once a month, I host our group at my house and make dinner. I proud of them rushing to get the food I made! 

This final photo is a glimpse of some of the cookies we made for our staff retreat. I found myself cooking several desserts. This day, in particular, I felt like a Keebler elf.