October 2023 Update: Washing Feet and Fun With Friends

October

Here are some moments from October! 

We kicked off the month going to UTDs National Night Out where we were blessed with a jazz ensemble and singing  performance, with vocals by a core member named Renae George. When I tell yall she can sing… She can saaaaang. She even has an EP on Spotify! Just type in her name or the EP title “Beauty For Ashes” on Spotify! The last track entitled “Rest”  is probably my all-time favorite song/theme song for the month of October.

Me and my core members at National Night Out! 

This is us doing modern day foot washing as an outreach event. Instead of washing peoples actual feet, we decided to clean their shoes. We got this idea from the UTA pastoral team. They said they did it and it was a great turnout at their campus, so we decided to try it. This was probably one of my most favorite outreach activities we ever have done. So many people would ask us why we were doing this, and we got to ask them if they knew the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet. I’m pretty sure that collectively, each person had never heard of the story so we were able to tell them about it.  It was cool because telling them the story that the activity came from immediately opened up the door for them to be able to ask more spiritual questions and us have more spiritual conversation. It removed the awkwardness of approaching people cold and asking them if they would like to join a Bible study or a small group or if they know about Jesus.  I was able to paint a vivid picture of Jesus and why I loved him to every person whose shoes I cleaned. It was so special! 

What would October in Texas be without the Texas state fair! This is me with a core member (Morolake) former FOCUS coworkers/friends (Michelle and Andrea). 

Meet Arielle. She was in my very first core as an apprentice with FOCUS. I had the privilege of studying the Bible with her as well as baptize her. It was so good to catch up with her, pray over her, and speak truth into her life. I am so proud of the way that she has chosen to lean into community even though this season of her life currently pulls her in other directions. In spite of not being able to continue in her education at UT Dallas, I have probably seen her at more Friday Night Fellowships than some other students 😊

Meet Chloe, Serenity, and Madi. These girls are some of my favorite girls to study the Bible with. They reminded me so much of myself in a lot of ways, but mostly in their hunger and thirst, to know God. They are all very deep thinkers, intelligent, and remember the things that we talk about. It is evident that they each have a heart that is curious and wants to learn and grow. Studying the Bible with them is probably one of the highlights every week.

This is what happens when you leave your phone unattended at FOCUS 😊 say hi to Daijon (in the back) and Emmanuel (in the front) 

This is a snapshot from our Noche de Baile after event. In celebration of Hispanic heritage month, we learned some Hispanic dances and dance the night away.💃🏾… I’ll give you bonus points if you can guess who taught those dance 🙃🤭

A snapshot of Renae, and another of our fellow coworkers, Siena, hanging out and strategically planning out things for our ministry over at SMU. This is what my apartment looks like in case you ever wondered! Fun fact… All of this furniture is off of the street!!! Text me if you want to know the backstory😎

Core moments at FNF!

Our annual skate party for Bliss! It was a great turn out…we got three newcomers! One of them even joined my Core! This was successful, because that was the goal! 

Everyone meet Laiya. She feels like my bonus little sister. Laiya is probably one of my favorite people. Not only is she super talented at doing my hair and other black girls hair within our Focus community, but she is also wise beyond her years and incredibly funny. Getting my hair done by Laiya is a cherished time every time 🥰. 

The process. Can you guess how many hours it took?

This is a picture of our UTD pastoral staff, eating lunch together before our day of Sabbath rest. We took time to pray through the people in our ministry, as well as the people in our personal lives. It was very fruitful and life-giving.

My view from my hammock on our Sabbath day.

This is what learning together at FNF looks like ♡ 

This is what happens when you leave your phone unattended at FOCUS 😊

Friday night Fellowship after event!

My core! This night we talked about the question, “What would it take for you to see people the way Jesus sees them?” It was a lively discussion.

A parking lot hang out after Core!

This is what happens when you leave your phone unattended at FOCUS 😊 Everyone, meet Gordon 

This is what happens when you leave your phone unattended at FOCUS 😊

This is what happens when you leave your phone unattended at FOCUS 😊

The coolest cats in town haha. Believe it or not this is the only photo I got from our Halloween party. They aren’t the most festive lol.

TIKTOKS!

Thank you so much if you made it to the end of this blog! And even if you didn’t make it to the end of this blog, thank you so much! Thank you for being on my support team. Thank you for being willing to invest in my role in this ministry. Thank you for giving me the chance to learn what it looks like to share Jesus, and take part in his way of living. I would not be able to have this much fun without your generosity. 

September 2023 Update: Core, FOJs, and Fall Retreat!

September

It’s September! It would be nice to say "its fall," but get real...this is Texas and we all know that its hot until the middle of October. Core's have begun, FOJs, have begun, and Fall Retreat is behind us. For the new people on my support team you will hear these words a lot, so let me take some time to define it:

Core: Core is what we call our small groups. It, unlike most of the words in FOCUS, is not an acronym, but we call it core because our small groups are the "core" of what we do. We seek to be a ministry where we have life-on-life relationships and our small groups are where we are able to make that happen.

FOJ: FOJ is our one-on-one bible study called Focus On Jesus. Its a 10 week study designed to make the individuals who are studying it come face to face with Jesus, themselves, and a decision: Will you call Jesus Lord or will you not? I know that that seems a little intense, which in all of the right ways it is, but at the same time you are faced with the overarching question of "who do you say I am?" we are also building a deep spiritual friendship with the people that we are studying with. FOJ is my personal favorite because it is this study that brought me to the decision to follow Jesus as an adult. FOJ was where I actually intentionally read scripture and spent more time with it than I ever had. It was through learning the person of Jesus and being in relationship with the girl I was studying with that caused me to decide that Jesus was worth a try. FOJ never ceases to bring me face to face with Jesus, every week, several times a week, with the different students I get to study with. It is truly one of the most transformative experiences across the board for many people in our ministry. FOJ continues to be the place where people are changed... not because there's magic to FOJ, but because the Word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart : )

Fall Retreat: This is also not an acronym, but Fall Retreat is a 22hr camp that we put on for our students early on in the year so that they can deepen their relationships with each other and God. The hope with Fall Retreat is that everyone in each person's core would come and have these experiences with each other and get some good momentum to become close friends. We do things like play games, do crafts, participate in outdoor sports, worship and take communion, learn from each other with our student testimonies, and then have one big sleepover in the bunkhouses with our cores! Fall Retreat is short, but packs a punch for helping people feel connected to our ministry and to each other. 

I think its safe to say that the year is off to a great start, and the revival that our staff prayed for over the summer is definitely springing up in some really sweet ways. Cores have been bigger than ever, freshmen have been more excited than normal when asked if they want to do FOJ, more and more new faces are showing up at our Friday Night Fellowship each week. God is at it again with drawing hearts and minds to him. Praise God! 

Thank you so much for your support and for your belief in what FOCUS is doing at UTD. I am so thankful to each of you for being on my support team. Enjoy the photos below! 

My first core! 

This is Shayla and Myla. Imagine two quiet, more closed off girls, suddenly becoming chatter box besties at the mention of a video game called Red Dead Redemption 😌. And then I want you to imagine me now joining them every Friday to play said video game… #campusministry lollll…Only the Lord knows! 

Us gamer girls at Taco Bell 

We (which really means, I) even made us a lil chant 😂

Fall Retreat Group Photo!

Worship Session @ Fall Retreat 

Fall Retreat Recap

Thank y’all so much for donating to my ministry this year. I could not and would not be able to have fun with students like this if it weren’t for your generosity! 

How can I be praying for you? Text me! 415-933-3877

 

August 2023 Update: Welcome Week: A week that will never be unnecessary!

AUGUST

Welcome Week 

Welcome week 2023 was here, and it was hot! Like for real…I’m talking 105 to 110° each day 😳!!! It was insane! But nonetheless, welcome week was a raging success. So many new students plugged into community, cores, and bibles studies already and it’s only the 2nd week of school. 

All the way from our board games in the freshman, residence halls, to being kicked out of the freshman residence halls and relocated outside, all the way to chalking up the sidewalk of the campus, to cackling and laughing way too loud with new personalities, to eating in the dining halls with freshmen that are trying their best to come across cool and collected when in reality they’re actually a lot more afraid/awkward/lost then they hope to look, to saving and texting over 80 to 100 new phone numbers (and that’s just me!), to our "Everything's Bigger in Texas" event, to our "Black People Meet and Greet," to our "Asian American Boba Social," to our "Mi Gente Latino Social," to our deep dive into the book of Jude, to our "Friday Night Fellowship Kick Off," to our on boarding of a new leader team, to our field night, to our bracelet making, to zombie tag, to Whataburger, to my mouth being so dry from talking to so many new people but loving it all the while, to walking people to their classes, to our worship unplugged night, to our carpool to church on Sunday with so many new faces… Welcome week was nothing short of what is promised: an uphill trek of event after event, but a critical time to introduce our new students to a Jesus Culture early on.

The mission of welcome week is not to get people to join our ministry, but instead it is to show the new freshmen that they can belong to a community that cares about and loves them before they prove anything. We seek to make a campus community experience a norm so that they remember the feeling of what its like to be welcomed in hopes that they either follow that feeling right away, or that they are able to recall that feeling when they get lost/when things get hard. College for the first time is more and more overwhelming as each freshman class gets younger because they all went through COVID at a younger age, which makes COVID more and more a part of their most impressionable years. On a campus like UTD where we are one of the statistically loneliest and most depressed campuses in the DFW, FOCUS and other ministries like ours, are bringing life, stability, and joy to the student body in hopes that they will one day run into Jesus himself.

STORY 

A quick story that I mentioned earlier: there were two occasions where I ran into freshmen, who were a bit off kilter being on a new campus:

 The first instance was with a guy who was in the lobby of the residence hall. He was clinging to his tote bag for dear life and, nervously, looking from side to side with shifty eyes, was trying to figure out if he was going to either awkwardly sit and join in it with the rest of the people who were playing board games, or if he was going to awkwardly leave the res hall knowing that he had no destination in mind and nobody to go with.  As his eyes were shifting, my eyes and his eyes locked and I, very brightly and warmly said, "Hey, come on over! Wanna join us?" He scurry's over to the seat on the couch next to me and says, "Oh thank God! My parents just dropped me off and went back to Austin and I feel so awkward and lost. I literally just had a mental break down in my room..Wanna see a picture?"

The next story was kind of the same feeling, but this took place in the dining hall. I was meeting up in the dining hall with a new freshman that I had met the day prior, and her and I were sitting together. As we were sitting together, there was a girl who was adjacent to us, but close enough to us to where I could see all that she was doing. In my eye line, I see her, twice, try to FaceTime a friend, but to no avail. Both times the FaceTime call went to voicemail. As she looks up from the phone, she flips her hair, crosses her legs, her chest caves in and then her and I catch each other’s eyes. I ask her, "Would you like to sit with us?" And she says, "OMG yes, thank God! I feel so awkward and alone! Like, I was trying to call my friend, so I don’t just look like I’m sitting here by myself, but nobody answered. Plus, my roommates also said that they were going to come to the dining hall, but they’re not here yet, so yea. I just am here and I feel weird." 

So what do we learn from these two stories? Freshmen in college need friends! They are brand new, a lot of them on their own for the first time, and they most often have no clue what college is like nor what they’re going to do. They understand their need for friends, but all the while, are too scared, and too out of practice in how to make them.

I am proud and thankful to be a part of a ministry that is able to intercept people who are feeling a bit at a loss. Providing students with the opportunity for connections where it would be very easy to feel alone and lost will never be unnecessary. 

We are friends to people without cause because Jesus was a friend to us first without sensible cause. Freely we give because freely we have received. I thank God for the work that I get to do here in FOCUS on the UTD campus! 

Thank you so much for being on my team and believing in what we do! 

Enjoy these tiktok videos that I’ve been making since I’m officially the UTD FOCUS TikToker 😌 

Thank you for making it to the end of this blog. Thank you for being on my support team! Y'all are undefeated!  

How can I be praying for you? Text me! 

415-933-3877

July 2023 Update: Gospel Choir

 I GOT TWO WORDS FOR YOU:

!!!GOSPEL CHOIR!!!! 

For the school year, since I am one of the worship leaders at UTD, and since our mission as a UTD staff team was to do more intentional, more engaging multiethnic outreach, I made it my personal goal, as a black worship leader with a background in gospel music, to introduce a new gospel song each time that I led worship. Since it was the summer and we had a little bit more time on our hands, I decided to finally execute an idea that had been talked about on several different occasions throughout my time in FOCUS with different co-workers, friends and students. So now, we had our very first, of hopefully more, FOCUS gospel choir performances! 

Below is a snippet of the performance from our weekly summer gathering called "Thursday Night Fellowship" or TNF for short. We sang the song "God Is In Control" by Ricky Dillard and I called up some old friends from Dallas Black Dance Theatre, my previous job, to help me out with this too! 

It was a blast! Definitely hoping to make this happen again this year. Enjoy the clip! Text me if you want the full video! 

June 2023 Update: San Diego & SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry)

JUNE

San Diego Girls Trip 

In June I got to go on a girls trip with my co-workers! Yup! My coworkers! This is a big deal to me because, in what world can you take a trip with people from your workplace and there be no petty fighting, gossip, or unresolved conflict? Now Im not saying that we are all perfect, but I am saying only in the upside-down-Kingdom of God can this kind of consistency of connectivity, humility, and others mindedness exist for 4 days at a time in a group of 6 grown women with 1 bathroom, 2 to a bed, 1 car, and different personalities and preferences. Don't believe me? Go on a girls trip with all of your coworkers and tell me how it goes¯\_(ツ)_/¯....lol. Enjoy these photos from it! Thank you for your generosity that allowed me to go on this trip!

Us on the plane. From left to right: Mandy, Amy (cant see her), Kylie, Lindsey (cant see her), Andrea

June SICM 

In June I got to be the point staff person that was responsible for our 4 FOCUS students in attendance to SICM. We normally take our larger group from FOCUS to SICM in May, but every now and then, there are a handful of students who are selected to go, but have certain conflicts that keep them from going in May, so someone volunteers to take them in June. This time it was me! 

For those who don't know, SICM is a week long conference hosted by our sister ministry in Bellingham Washington called Campus Christian Fellowship (CCF; a branch off of Kai Alpha Campus Ministry). At this conference students sit through a week of varied content from about 9-4 each day to learn different skills and tools for how to be leaders for Christ on their respective campuses. 

Being the point staff person was a wake up call that I was an actual adult. I was so blessed by this trip because I went in not knowing any of the 4 students really well, but we left that trip as a family unit! Maddie, Grace, Josiah, and Huy are forever my siblings after this trip! We got inside jokes and everything :) I loved getting to go and worship with them, learn alongside them, challenge them on certain ideas, learn from them, and  most of all trade our favorite music on the car ride from Bellingham to Seattle WA. Here's to the adventures we shared! Enjoy! 

From left to right: Madi, Grace, Josiah, Huy (pronounced hwee)

do you think I touched this or not?

Who knew that teaching someone how to ride a scooter could reveal so much about them?

Auuuu 

Canadaaaaaaa! 

Bellingham WA (where the conference was held, is about 30 mins from the Canadian border!) 

Our host family hooked us up with the best dinners every night!! 

and they even took time to celebrate Grace with decorations and a cupcake and a card! Tim and Tracy were seriously the best! 

photos just don't do the views justice

Us actually crossing the Canadian border to do outreach on a college campus out there! 

A camp fire with our new friends for our last night 

All my new siblings

Huy was always making us laugh

He's my 

Madi turned 21 @ this moment on our way back home!

June was a gift and a great time. Thank you so so much to you, my supporters who are so willing to support me in doing this timeless work! I hope you enjoyed! 

How can I be praying for you? 

Text me! 

415-933-3877