Emily's Ministry Updates

 Somebody pinch me. How are we already done with October?  October felt daunting to me. I had several big events planned on most of the weekends this month: FOCUS's fall camp, my annual visit to Wichita Falls with students, and visiting Tenth and Broad for their Diamond Jubilee Celebration of missions. All of these events were special and exciting, but I felt intimidated that they would leave me feeling drained from lack of rest. You know I love to host and make sure people are having a great time. I prayed and God gave me the strength to be present at all of these events. It really helps that I get to work with some fun people.  On that note, I want to say thank you again for supporting me in ministry. Your partnering with me through financial support makes this ministry possible. I am so grateful for your faithful prayers. It never ceases to amaze me how kind God is and I am reminded as I type about this past month. Thank you! Anyways, Let's get into the first event: Wichita

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God."- Colossians 3:16      Back in August this verse was introduced to the staff as our theme verse. Our theme verse for the year is something we let guide our year as we plan everything. Last year, we focused on how to do evangelism through friendships. It was something we heated up and talked about with our leaders often. We saw students being bolder than ever in their classrooms, making efforts to befriend people who would not typically come to a ministry event. So, I love how this year's verse is influencing our community.       Our staff team has started different initiatives to promote scripture reading: a scripture memorization challenge and hosting a public scripture reading event weekly. The scripture memorization challenge has been going well. The first challenge was to memorize the Be