Help us Father! It's almost August!

Hello everyone! Can you believe it’s already August? Every year I’m shocked at how quickly the summer comes and goes. The Lord has been doing big things this summer in allowing time for us as campus missionaries to rest and to plan for the incoming school year.  One of the ways we have been preparing for the fall is by building our student leader team, which is composed of students who are excited to co-lead a small group (core) with another student! This is always one of my favorite times of the year, as we have conversations with students and watch the Lord move in their hearts to decide to step up and join God in what he is doing on campus. This next year I will be leading core with Ro, a student who has been a part of our ministry for a few years, but who has accepted the call to see what the Lord could do through her! I will introduce her further later, but I am excited for August to see who God puts in Ro and I’s paths as well as that of all of our other students! For as long as I can remember, we at UTD have had our large group meetings on Fridays, which we have referred to as Friday Night Fellowship. This summer however, we on the Friday night team have thought and prayed through renaming this night in order to communicate more about what we are about as a ministry and what we will be doing during these meetings. During one of our Friday night team meetings, Cort, another campus missionary here, said, “Well, I think three things that we want to emphasize that we do is: we root in Scripture, branch out and form/deepen friendships with others, and we encourage students to let God bear fruit in their lives.” This led us to lots of ideas, but we settled on the name…. drumroll please… The Grove! We believe that with renaming this aspect of our ministry, we will be able to have our students articulate better why coming together week to week is so important, and that it will further strengthen our unity as a community. Please be praying for us as we launch our first Grove meeting on August 23rd! Another way we are preparing for the fall is trying to thinking through how to welcome Hispanic students into our ministry and into a relationship with Jesus. This year, we have added Johnny to our FOCUS administration team, and he has been meeting up with David and I to plan out this fall semester! One idea we are still praying through is if we would like to start a Spanish-speaking small group that could meet once a week and read through Scripture, discuss, and pray together. My friend Sandra, who works at a campus missionary at Dallas College, and I have been working on getting our FOCUS on Jesus (FOJ) Bible study translated into Spanish, so the idea of starting a spanish speaking group is very fresh and exciting to me. With David being a full-time engineer now, please pray that the Lord would continue to guide us and make a way for us to make the most of any event that we are able to have, and that the Lord would bring students who are receptive to the gospel! As we kick off August, would you join me in prayer? Pray that the Lord would strengthen our hearts, minds, and social batteries as we begin meeting, inviting, and befriending students stepping onto campus. Pray that the Lord would instill in our students a spirit of boldness, and that they would take every opportunity presented to them to show students who Jesus is through how they care for them and talk about him. Pray that the Lord would remove any barriers trying to prevent us from inviting students who see God’s goodness, and that he would soften the hearts and minds of students to hear the good news and ultimately to make Jesus the Lord of their lives! I leave you now with a few Scriptures that have been on my heart lately. I hope that they are encouraging to you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generosity and prayer. I am constantly overwhelmed with joy and hope when I think about your partnership with me and ultimately our partnership with the Lord as we go out and fulfill his mission together! Romans 8:38-39 “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Philippians 1:6 “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” Colossians 1:9-14 “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and long-suffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Also here are a few pictures from this month, they make more sense at the end because they're kinda random and it was hard to put them throughout haha. Love y'all! Andrea

Grabbing lunch with students after church. Of course we had to get the hats.

On the 4th of July, a group of students got together to go and watch fireworks. It was so fun!

This is a photo from our Summer FOCUS last week! Pictured are students from all across the DFW FOCUS campuses.