The biggest deal is preparing for our internship next school year. This has recently been a source of much excitement for me! Our staff will be interviewing the 11 applicants this weekend and we will be making final decisions within the week. This is such a big deal because it shapes what we will be able to do next year. Plus one of our most important goals for the internship is to make it a beneficial experience to them. Please be in prayer over this whole process as we decide who to accept. As soon as the decisions are made on March 8 we will kick into high gear on preparing the new interns for starting on August 1st. The majority of this will be training them for raising financial support confidently and successfully. That is commonly the most stressful part of the internship so please be in prayer for them as they reach out to friends and family for support.
The other "big thing" in March is Student Spring Impact (SSI). A group of about 20 students from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA will come to visit our ministries for various types of on campus evangelism. If you remember me talking about SICM in my previous post, these students are sent from the ministry that hosts that conference. Their ministry's name is Campus Christian Fellowship (CCF). Anyway each of our campuses has a different outreach planned for the SSI students to join us in. At UNT we have planned a campaign called "I'm Sorry." Christians have done a lot of damage to Christ's name over the years and sometimes all we can do is apologize. So we will have a marker board set up for students passing by to write their complaints about Christians. This gives us an opportunity to apologize personally and hopefully start meaningful conversations with people. We will only need to have a handful of students around the marker board, so the others will walk around campus doing conversational evangelism. That simply means starting conversations with people by asking them questions about their beliefs and only sharing our own if asked. That gives people the option of getting out of the conversation whenever they want.
So now I'd like to look back on a few things that have happened recently. First is Parent Night/Open House. Every year we invite any parents, family, friends, spiritual mentors, etc. of the students to visit our large group meeting. The goal is to give parents a snapshot of what our ministry is all about. We also love to use that time to honor the parents for raising their children so well! What makes Parent Night so special is getting to hear the parents speak about the change they have seen in their child since being a part of our ministry. However, in no way do we take any credit for that because it's truly a God deal that He works through us. Here are a few pictures from that evening:
The other thing I wanted to share with you is a baptism of one of our student leaders. This is one of the sweetest guys in our ministry and a special moment in his life. We had been trying to plan this baptism for a while now and finally made it happen. Check it out!
I have a few prayer requests as well:
1) Please continue to pray for Austin Gage's mother and that family. I had mentioned her situation in my January Update. She is terminally ill and the doctors are giving her until summer. She is a believer in Christ and she is at peace with everything. Austin is doing okay emotionally but his sister and father are having a hard time dealing with it.
2) Please pray for our internship as we decide who will be accepted and as they prepare for 12 months devoted to campus ministry. Also pray for our staff as we guide them throughout that process. Pray that we can provide the necessary mentor support to ensure they have a successful year learning and growing in discipleship.
3) And be in prayer for our SSI group coming the last full week in March. Pray for God to teach those students through a meaningful experience while here in Texas and to touch our campuses through the outreach events we have planned.
Again thank you so much for your support and prayers. It's a blessing to be able to share my ministry with you. May God continue to bless you.
Yours for the Campus,
Matt
