October Update

This  month has been a little rough because I got a sinus infection and was trapped in bed for a couple of days and two weeks later I rolled my ankle bad enough to need crutches (still recovering from this, but off of the crutches!).  Those things in themselves weren't big deals, but they slowed me down from doing what I normally was able to.  There was good that came out of it of course.  Our first official Friday Night Fellowship happened during my sickness so the interns had to take charge and make sure everything ran smoothly during the service.  That was a great experience for them.  Fortunately, one of the other senior staff from Collin College was able to come preach for our group on such short notice.  God is good!

Our biggest event this month was Park Day on September 21st, which if you remember what day that is (and you live in Texas), you'll know that was probably the perfect day for this event.  It had just rained the previous day for the first time in a while so the overall temperature dropped considerably and since the sun was shining bright, all of the rain dried up!  It was beautiful...

Anyway, the goal of this event is to bring our whole UNT/TWU community together and invite all of the new people we've met to welcome them in; it's to help build new friendships so they are well rooted.  We started the day out with some goofy games to help everyone learn each other's names and get more comfortable around the others.  After that we had them split into pairs and do "walk and talks" with someone they didn't know very well.  The prompt during that time was just to share their history and ask each other questions to learn more about the other person.  Then for the next three hours they were free to pretty much do whatever they wanted.  There were several optional games that the staff planned, but the point was that our body was integrating the new people into our fellowship.  We had a delicious dinner of hotdogs and smoked pork and concluded the day with a short service.  Along with singing some worship songs that night we asked four students to share what they valued in the community in order to show new people what they could expect to find if they were a part of it.  Here are some pictures of the event so you can get a small sense of what it looked like:

Rock, Paper, Scissors battle

Bananagrams Tournament!  Very intense.

Our corefas have been very busy lately meeting with their core members and starting one-on-one Bible studies.  Please pray for the student leaders as they lead those studies and for the students they are teaching, that they would truly see Jesus in their study of scripture.

This Friday morning we are starting a discipleship class which will be open to our entire ministry.  It will be a study of Mark, but the primary goal is to help the students grow and be challenged in their faith.  That class will be led by Garrett, who is our campus director at Collin College.  I am really excited about this class, because it allows the students who aren't in leadership for various reasons to be able to step up into a higher level of responsibility.  We like to give our students ample opportunities to not be passive!  Please pray that God uses this to really move in the lives of our students.

The interns have been working on a weekly outreach project that will be on UNT and TWU campuses.  With the help of our student leaders, the aim of that is to get people talking about who God is, regardless of their beliefs, and ultimately make that a much more common conversation in the campus life.  The mission statement is to "Stir up an atmosphere of curiosity and exploration of God's character so that people get personally invested in the question of who God is."  Please pray that our students will be bold as they engage in conversations with a variety of people, that it would be successful in making them think about who God is.

Also our TWU ministry will have its first ever large group meeting this Wednesday!  Sarah, one of the UNT interns, will be leading that meeting.  She would appreciate your prayers in that and you can probably read more about it on her blog.

Please keep in mind that you are welcome to come visit on a Friday night any time you would like.  Just contact me and I will make sure you know all of the details.

Thank you again and again for your partnership and support!  May God continue to bless you.


Yours for the Campus,

Matt