Back into the swing of things!

Hello supporters! I hope all of you are doing well. Thank you so much for all of your support throughout the month. As the school year begins nearing its end, I have so much to share with you! Towards the beginning of the semester, my mom was hospitalized again due to an infection that began growing in her back surgery wound. That meant that I was in San Antonio taking care of her in the hospital. Thankfully, this hospital visit was not as intense as her previous ones, so she was able to get discharged in a week so that she could continue with radiation and chemotherapy. Lately, my mom has been doing pretty good, she has just been tired as a side effect of the treatment. Thank you all for praying for her, we are very grateful to God for the miracle of medical technology.

After being in San Antonio for that, I drove up to Richardson and picked up where I had left off in ministry. My FOJ studies continued and my 2 on 1 meetings with the student leaders picked up again. As we near the end of the semester, several of my girls that I am studying with are getting to the end of the study. I have been very proud of the way that they open up and trust me enough to share about how God is moving in their hearts. One of my girls, Portia, has been causing me a bit of whiplash. She is not the same girl that I met in August! God has been moving in her life tremendously by inviting others into her life and into her heart, something that she never thought she would be doing. One of the things that Miriam, Rebecca, and I have been trying to do in our core is to create conversations that lead to deeper and more intimate friendships among the girls. This past week in core, we read through an article titled the ‘Tunnel of Chaos’ which speaks about how in order to cross over to real community from ‘pseudo community’ where people are not really telling each other what is really going on in their lives but are settling for a surface-level relationship with one another, we must cross the tunnel of chaos. This tunnel will be uncomfortable and painful at times, but through the chaos, God will move us towards real community. I think Portia really took this to heart, because this last core, she completely opened up to us and shared some of her childhood experiences that were pretty vulnerable. God was definitely present in that moment and in our group afterward, because it created space for the other girls to speak into her life and to embrace Portia. A couple of other girls in core shared afterward that they had similar experiences and they started to open up about that too. I am so proud of Portia and for the ways that God is stirring in her heart and how that is impacting others too!

Another one of the girls in my core, Miriam, decided to give Jesus full control of her life and I had the honor of baptizing her! Here is a bit of her testimony she shared that night:

“Before God, all of the things that I once thought would bring me a sense of fulfillment, left me feeling so broken in the end, and I could never really be truly fulfilled until I made Jesus Lord of my life… Proverbs 4:23 says, ‘watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it, flow the springs of life’… I was looking for fulfillment in all the wrong places and nothing compared to the feeling I received when I made Jesus the center of my life. If you are feeling numb or are searching for fulfillment, I encourage you to come and see what God has in store for you. It's never too late to come to Jesus and receive healing and fulfillment”.

Those are some of the highlights from this past month! Thank you so much for reading. I pray that God would be so evident in your lives and that He would continue to open your eyes to seeing his goodness every day. I love you each! Blessings, Andrea Here are some more photos from this month!