April 2025

One of y’all who read my blog pointed out that I put a lot of food pictures on my blog. That’s because you’d either get a lot of screenshots of spreadsheets or accounting or of our database OR nothing at all because I’m actually horrible at taking pictures at the events I go to. It’s not something that comes naturally to me (I’m not a social media kind of person… if you’ve seen my Instagram, you’d understand). So I apologize if you’re looking for something different!

That said, just because the pictures are not there, does not mean that God is not moving through our ministry! I hope y’all had a great Easter!

SICM is soon! In about 2 weeks, we’ll take over 100 students (about 145 in total, including our staff) to Washington state to learn more about how to minister on their campuses. Believe me, it’s a big deal! (And takes a lot of work to coordinate.) As it stands, we’re taking more students than they can host in homes and so we need to rent some additional homes on Airbnb just to house them all. If you’d like to help with this extra expense, you can donate to SICM at anyfocus.org/give2sicm.

I love playing pickleball, but lately, the weather has been unpredictable. (Is it going to be sunny, windy, or thundering? Who knows?) Luckily, we have a building that is typically empty in the evening to be able to play! I have recently rekindled my joy of teaching people how to play, it’s fun getting to see people improve week-by-week with gentle correction. (There’s a metaphor in there about our relationship with God somewhere.)

My friend had asked me to make some cinnamon rolls with him late one night for a bachelor party the next day. Unfortunately, in the middle of us doing so, my mixer broke! That, amongst some other mishaps that night, resulted in us maniacally laughing at our circumstances and turning in for the night without anything to show for our efforts. But don’t worry, I got the mixer fixed eventually.

Some pies I made with my friend. See my post from October for other pies we have made! (Always pecan pie, though.)

I had a friend prepare a tea party for another friend’s birthday. Although I didn’t attend, I did help think through how to execute the plan and I thought it was such a sweet gesture. I was touched by the amount of effort that she went through despite her own busyness to really showcase how much she loved her friend. I think we could all use a little reminding sometimes, maybe not in the form of a tea party, but to do something to show the people we love, the depth of our love for them.

My friends, Jacob and Siena, had a few of us over for dinner one night. You might recognize Advait in the top-left of the photo from my November blog post and Daijon from my December post. Arianna, at the top-right, is one of our pastors at UTD! It was a fun night to catch up and just hang out with friends.

This picture might just look like a burger, but it’s so much more! Okay, maybe not much more, but I finally got a grill! I have been meaning to buy a grill for maybe 3-4 years, but never wanted to pull the trigger due to the price. But I finally found a grill on Facebook marketplace that was cheap and nice and so I decided to go for it! I’m especially excited to be able to have people over for a cookout*! (*In Washington, we would call it a barbecue.)

Here’s my friend Jacob again! He’s a doctor now! I went to his dissertation defense and quickly realized that I had stopped understanding what he was talking about after his introduction ended. Something about droplets and isothermal surfaces. But the most important news is that he got it done! :-)

My friend Renae is a singer (an incredible one) and has an ep out on Spotify. I had gotten the ep lathe cut onto a vinyl record for her birthday and when we went to play it, found out that her record player had broken! So then me and Arianna (throw back to that dinner 3 pictures ago) asked a bunch of her friends to crowdsource the money to buy her a newer, better record player. And then we gave that to her for her birthday too! And then when we went to play the record on the new player… I realized that the new player did not have built-in speakers (oops). Probably should have done more research. Luckily, Renae’s friend was already giving away some old speakers and they work perfectly, so everything is now fine in the world. Just that it took 3 tries to actually play the record.

Here are two videos I took of recent BLISS events. BLISS stands for Black Lives in Soulful Solidarity. This ministry is headed by Lailah and is specifically catered towards people of color at UTD! This ministry came about when looking at the demographic of Christian organizations at UTD, it seemed like there were organizations that were catered towards or comprised of many different, specific, ethnic groups, but none that leaned into African or African American culture. The cookout event was inviting people into and celebrating a part of Black culture.

A Night of Gospel Worship was an event to share gospel music and Black Church culture with the community!