We're Finally Here!

 Hello,

I hope you're doing well! Time seems to be flying, and I can hardly believe we're almost half way through August now. We just had our Corefa Prep training this past Friday and Saturday, and it went SO WELL! It was so great getting to see our Corefas almost all together for the first time (online, but still better than nothing). I think it put everyone in good spirits and made us all excited for this school year.

Welcome Week

My only update is about Welcome Week. If you don't know, all of our campus ministries have events during move in and/or the first week of school in order to meet people. This is usually how we meet most of the people who come into our ministry for the first time that school year, so it's a big deal! UTD FOCUS in particular has at least one thing going every single day for two weeks, and if we didn't plan an event, we attend what the school is doing for welcome week. As you know though, we're in a pandemic, and meeting people is very different than normal. There was a lot of conversations and brain storming about how we would approach this Welcome Week. We decided for a mix of online and socially distant in-person things. 

As of right now, we've done two of our welcome week days, and it's been an interesting experience. In years past our first two or three days of events have some of the greatest fruit! The past two years we've started out meeting Freshman right after they've moved in, set up in the Res Halls, and invited them to play games with us. We'd normally meet at least 50 people the first night alone. Then for the rest of the week, we'll have a lot of the same people coming to our events, as well as meeting more new people. This year, however, we can't even go into the Res Halls! The past two days combined, we've maybe met 15 people. I say that just to explain how different of an experience this is turning out to be! Our hope is that slowly we can meet more people as more and more students move in this week. 

So my prayer request for you guys is just for our events these next two weeks. We're not worried about numbers or anything, but more so that we're still faithful to God this Welcome Week. I think it's easy to not want to try as hard or throw in the towel easier, but we just ask for wisdom and tenacity. I really do believe that God is working on campus in neat ways, and I'm excited to see what he does this year. 

Student Testimony

Thank you so much for your prayers and support! I'll end with a student testimony:)