NOVEMBER
Church Retreat
Unfortunately I didn't get many picture of our Church retreat because I was having too much fun, but here are a couple of the last moments we had before everyone left. One of the things that I love about our community is its commitment to going places together and bonding. I love my church and I love the people that go there.
Have you ever played One Night Werewolf? Its a game of accusation and lying lol. Makes for a good time around people who try to make it their business not to lie.
Evelyn and Jack
Tossing a football around
deciding on lunch plans
Hymnsing
This is a snapshot of Cornerstone Family Church. This ministry has been praying for years for a way to connect with the students at UTD and that time has finally come. This church is filled with older men and women (anywhere from 65+) and they so sweetly invited us to come to their event called Hymnsing; where we simply come together and sing hymns. They were all so sweet to us, so glad to have us in their church and made us tacos : ). I never knew that sweet elderly people singing hymns to God could make me cry so much.
Celine's Baptism
This is a really sweet story. This is Celine. Her and I studied the bible together last school year but didn't finish so we got together to finish up this school year. As we were sitting in a Jollibee chicken restaurant, and as we are figuring out where we last left off, I ask her if she still wanted to get baptized. She says "Yes I do! I've been ready!" I say "Oh ok great! Lets figure out a date to do it." She says "How soon could I do it?" I say, flipping through the study and not making eye contact, and kind of jokingly, "You could do it tonight if you wanted to" and she says "Ok lets do it tonight" I look up from the pages and say "Yo, you for real?" and she says "Yes, Lailah Ive been ready!" and I say, "Like you mean tonight tonight?" and she says "Yes girl! Lets do it!" and I say, "Well shoot OK!!! Let me call Andrea to see if she and her roommates will let us use her pool!" and then I call Andrea, tell her the situation, she calls her roommates, they say, yes, we head over, secure a plastic bag for her hair and a change of clothes and I baptize her! I thought this was so NEAT! It reminded me of the story in the Bible in Acts 8 of the Ethiopian Eunuch that reads scripture with one of the disciples and at once is baptized in the nearby water. I thought that this was a really evident move of the Holy Spirit and I am so glad that I got to be a part of her story in this way. Praise God.
Random moments from our community in November
This is Nicole Bruner.
This is a group of us together at Nicole's place to pray for her before her hip surgery. Nicole is cool for many reasons, but one thing that I love about her is that though she has graduated she chooses to still be a small group leader for our students (aka core facilitator abbreviated "corefa"). She could be doing many other things with her time, yet she chooses to serve with FOCUS. Big props to Nicole :)
This is Kristen Paz. She is my friend and she just had her first babyyyyyy. His name is Evan and I adore him.
I think he is so precious.
This is Morolake (aka Ro). Her and I have been studying the Bible together this school year. It has been really cool to see her skepticism slowly change into curiosity and then into openness. She asks me thoughtful and deep questions that have made for some very interesting conversation. She is in my small group (core) and Im delighted that we are becoming closer friends.
Here are my fellow "apprentice siblings" from last year at our reunion. Here is a hackey sack circle....lolllll...I am so terrible at this game, and honestly embarrassed to play it because Im so bad, and even more honestly, I feel very out of place when I play it because black people, in my experience, just DO NOT play hackey sack 😂😂... but hey! try something new right?! lolllll
These are some of my friends from church. I love demmmm.
This is the day one of our core members decided to bring their dog. Lets just say we wont be doing that again hahaha.
board games, board games, board games...its the UTD way 😌
Ok this picture is kinda bad, but this is us in our Worship Team meeting talking about the sound spectrum and where certain instruments fall on it. All of this is to help our students better understand music and hopefully contribute to some more cohesive worship sets. Also, I dont think I told yall, but, I get to serve as a worship facilitator this year!! If that confusing, you can think of it still as a "worship leader," but we use the language of "facilitator" on purpose. Because our mission and vision in everything we do in FOCUS is to make and mature disciples to the glory of God (Matt 28), we choose that language because we hope that it will lift the expectation that the "worship leader" is the focal point/center of the attention in a given worship set. We trust that the Spirit is the leader, so it is our responsibility as the facilitators to be cognizant of and responsive to what The Spirit is prompting us to do (whether beforehand or in the moment), and facilitate people into a place of acknowledgment, praise, and reflection on God, the surrounding community, and not our "good singing" or adept musical skills. There are many things that outflow from this mission of making and maturing disciples that shape the worship in our community. Theres more to it that I could explain, but this paragraph is long already so Ill stop here. Feel free to email or call me if you wanna hear more (415-933-3877).
Christian History
This class has been interesting and hard. Interesting to see how much I didn't know about Christian History and the outworkings of it. Hard because of the painful and troubling realities that are laced within and intrinsically a part of it. Especially as a person of color. Especially as someone who's entire plight once was to never be Christian and never trust/be close to white people. Ultimately, in this class we are answering the overarching question of where have we come from as Christians, where are we now as Christians, and how do we best move forward in our lives and surrounding culture in light of the depth and breadth of meaning that is behind the name "Christian." Boy is that a big one and a personal one to wrestle with.
Pizza Theology
I think I've explained this before, but Pizza Theology is what we do 1x/semester to take a deeper dive into a particular topic that is related to our theology. Topics for this have ranged from race and culture, to cultural norms of sexuality compared to the biblical sexual ethic, to a singular book of the Bible, and more. We started doing this so that college students could take their faith from Sunday school understanding to a college level.
This Pizza Theology was on the book of Revelation! This 4 hour deep dive was aimed at unpacking the assumptions, misconceptions, tropes, mysteries, etc that our culture has adopted about Revelation in hopes to restore a nuanced and biblically accurate/literate/orthodox understanding of the origins and communicative intentions of this book/genre of literature. Basically we are looking at what Revelation meant first to the people it was written to, and their understanding of it, and THEN seeing how and where it informs our current post-modern context.
After Event
There is....
no telling.....
what kinds of things...
you might find
at an After Event 😂
Get a room full of "free in Christ" people together and this is some of the stuff that happens lol. Anything on the scale from normal/just chilling all the way to boys doing strength tests on each other (or just giving each other bear hugs...lol)
DECEMBER
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
I got to go to NY to see my dear friend and supporter perform in his first season with AAADT!!! IT WAS EVERYTHIIIIINNNGGGGG!!!! HE IS A BEAST!!!!!!!!!
#XAVIERMACK
UTD Christmas Party
After I left seeing Xavier in NY, I landed, and came right to this event lol. Wish I had gotten more pictures.
Core Hang
This is where we had a potluck and did a white elephant Christmas gift exchange before everyone left for the semester.
Christmas Service
Ok so yall remember the Hymnsing event I talked about closer to the top of the page? This is that same church with the older folks who love us! We did a joint service together and sang Christmas songs together and then enjoyed the 500 cookies and hot cider/cocoa they made for us!
Random Pictures
Say hi to Acacia and Inny...they are in my core :)
6 o'clock Dance Theatre
Ive been so glad to get to dance and perform a little bit while Im doing campus ministry. This is some of our holiday show. IT WAS FREEZING.
Holiday show part 2 where Rachel invited the whole church to come lol.
Mi Gente y BLISS Christmas Party
We sang karaoke and they made Pozole.....WHICH WAS FIRE AND I WANT IT ALL THE TIME
Another photo of Inny because I love her
Staff Christmas Party
Here are all my coworkers!
HOME
My sister got a dog. His name is Mace. We bonded.
My family on Christmas Day
Me and my mom at the Warriors game!
This is my dad. He works for the Chase Center where the Warriors play. Let's just say he LOVES his job lol.
He gets to sit next to the players tunnel!
Even though he works there we still got bad seats lol. Hopefully he gets a promotion or something soon so we can get better tickets lollll.
If you made it to the end of this update, BRAVO. I know it was a lot. Thank you for reading it and taking an interest in this chapter of my life! I am so thankful for your generosity that enables me to have these experiences. Yall are the greatest!
