Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello ministry partners! I hope that you had lovely thanksgivings with your families! I certainly loved seeing my extended family and getting to catch up with them.

Early this month, we had our Pizza Theology where an Old Testament scholar from Canada, Iain Provan, came and spoke to our students. It was incredible getting to hear him speak about how we can learn to find the truth about what it means to be human in Jesus and in him only instead of allowing ourselves to be influenced by philosophies that have infiltrated our ways of thinking all around the world. I love Pizza Theology every year because we have the opportunity to sit down and really dive deep into a topic for an extended period of time. It really allows students to think deeply about their faith, just how they are learning to think deeply in their classes. We want our students to be able to think about their faith at a college level too!

One of my favorite things that I have gotten to do this year has been to create spaces for our Latino students to express their culture and befriend one another. This month, David and I threw a nacho movie night and several students came and enjoyed dinner together while watching Puss in Boots! Haha. Before the movie, we went around and shared where everyone was from. We had students from Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, and Brazil! How cool is that? One of the challenges with leading this group is that we have gotten good traction getting students to come to our events, but it has proven difficult to get them to stay and try out our ministry. Would you be praying that each of the students that David and I meet would be open to hearing about Jesus and willing to try out a small group/join our ministry some other way?

Right before the thanksgiving break, we had a FOCUS alumni night at UTD and it was so awesome! We filled the entire Hoblitzelle Hall (which seats 300)! It was so fun getting to see alumni from different years join together to worship God through fellowship, music, and getting to catch up! It was neat because God has been so faithful at UTD and we got to see that physically as we looked around at all of the disciples God had created over the years. Many of our alumni choose to invest in our ministry financially too, so it was special for them too to see the current students they are investing in worshiping God! Thank you ministry partners! If you ever want to come and visit one of our Friday Night Fellowship meetings, please reach out to me and I can give you the details for that (the details change depending on which room we were able to reserve).

Towards the end of this month, I had to make a trip down to San Antonio to take care of my mom, who was in the hospital for 11 days due to a bad infection. Would you be praying for my family? We are facing some difficult decisions and will continue to face them for a while as my mom battles cancer. We believe that God is the giver of life and that he is good, but it has been difficult for all of us to come face to face with the daily realities of this disease and how it plays out in my mom’s life. I definitely didn’t want to end this update on a sad note, but I think it is important that you know what is going on in my life, especially as it relates to my ministry work here at UTD. Thank you SO much for all of your support this year, I am so grateful for how God provides for our work here through each of you! Thank you.

Yours, Andrea