November Ministry Update

      Where has the time gone! I can't believe that I am already 3 months into the apprenticeship, much less that we are coming closer and closer to the end of the year. This month was definitely packed with experiences from hanging out with people from my core to giving my first sermon at Richland!

     As mentioned above I was able to give my first sermon to the Richland students this past month at our large group meeting. It was definitely nerve-wracking to say the least but I thoroughly enjoyed getting to do so. I talked about our stories and how they are ever changing. This is a really neat time for college students because they are getting to make friendships that may perhaps be near and dear to us in our lifetime, they are forming habits that can either help or steer them away from God, and are forming their thoughts on their faith. With this all we must be willing to change if we must be continually renewed by God and grow from our experiences. In the message I touched on how God uses our past stories to create the one we are living today and how those affect us whether we want to acknowledge it or not but there is purpose behind those experiences. The question really remains not with what happened to us in the past but with how will we align our stories with God's from now on? 

Last Old Testament Class:(

     The apprentices recently finished reading through the Old Testament, and I can definitely say that my mind has been stretched and my thoughts have been challenged. Do I now know a lot or everything that has to do with the Old Testament? No, but I know a lot more than when I started, and I am so thankful for that. It has been good to grapple with the ideas presented in the Old Testament and see how we are a continuation of the Israelites. We have been called to be a blessing to people, and though God never leaves us, we make mistake after mistake but that is where we get to see just how good and merciful of a God we serve. I am definitely sad to see this class come to an end and I want to thank Mandy for putting up with all of our jokes and constant distractions. This class was LIT 🔥 thanks to her ;)

20 Year celebration| All Church Retreat with the Northeast Churches

     This past month we got to experience, for many of us, an all church retreat. Northeast Church is where FOCUS was started and they continue to be a huge supporter of the ministry. We got to hear how the church got started and the experiences that lead to whom the church is today. We got to see the vision for what the church is today and where we are headed as a church. It was a great weekend getting to see all three churches (Northeast Garland, Wylie, and Denton) come together along with some of our students from FOCUS.


     We also got to do some outreach events at Richland and I was really encouraged by how our students were ready and willing to talk with our students and engage them in discussion. We did an event called, "What would your epitaph say?" The students got to come up and design their tomb stones and get candy. It was a neat way of getting to see what they would want to be remembered for or what they valued and how they were working towards achieving the things they wrote down.

Here's a not so good quality of one of our Richland student hangouts we did.
We got to go bowling and spend some great time laughing and getting gutter balls!

     Thank you again to all who help me in financial support and prayer. God is doing great things on these college campuses and that is all thanks to you guys. Please take the time to read through our student testimony (below) for the month from one of our Richland students, Josh Erdmann, and visit the other Apprentices' blogs at [name].anyfocus.org (Jalen, Caitlin, Dawn and Kristen).