November 2024

As Thanksgiving is coming up (tomorrow!) I wanted to invite anyone that wanted to, to come hang out at a Friendsgiving potluck that I’m co-hosting with a few special guys on Thanksgiving day! We don’t want anybody celebrating alone, if they don’t want to. :-)

KFG or Keep FOCUS Growing is an annual fundraiser that FOCUS holds to raise money to, well as the name says, keep FOCUS growing! While all of our pastors fundraise their own salaries, this doesn’t include costs such as outreach, administration, and more. This year, some of our supporters have pledged $77,000 in matching funds—that means all of the donations that come in for KFG will be doubled, up to $77,000! You can hear more stories from students and staff on our social media pages on Facebook or Instagram. And you can read more about KFG and donate today at anyfocus.org/kfg!

Our church typically holds a ‘Fall Fun Fest’ around Halloween as a fundraiser for our JaM (Jesus and Me) kids ministry. This year, they were deciding to forego the event as it was (typically) too much work to plan and put on. That’s when I stepped in and said, ‘I can plan it… but you have to set your expectations low. I am a barebones kind of planner.’ Simple and easy is my motto, let the people entertain themselves. And it went great! It was a reboot year (changing expectations of what this event looks like for the church), and I called it ‘Fall Fun Fête’ which I thought was clever because it sounded similar to the old name, but different, but still meant the same thing (because I wanted to tell the church it was taking the place of something they knew, but wouldn’t be the same). But that kind of backfired because I learned that nobody knows what fête means. Here are our Halloween costume winners (best group, best adult, and best kid costumes).

We had the privilege of having Rikk Watts, a new testament professor, fly out to speak to our family of churches at a combined service. He spoke about keeping the big things, the big things, and the little things, little things. It’s such a unique privilege to have connections to so many world-renowned scholars and professors through our ministry in DFW, so to have Rikk come and speak was a joy.

Of course, the big reason Rikk flew out was to speak at our Pizza Theology event! This is not even close to how many pizzas we buy for this event, but I just thought it was a funny visual. Rikk spoke on 1 & 2 Samuel (or he tried to) over the course of 4 hours on a Sunday evening. 55 chapters in 4 hours is a tall task any day, even less doable when Rikk is trying to make it come alive for our students.

Of course, it’s that time of year! Me and Steph put up our Christmas tree and we’re getting into the Christmas spirit. :-) My most favorite time of the year! How early is too early to put up the tree? I wanted to put it up around mid-October, but Steph was being a Grinch about it. Let me know what you think!

Our church also had their annual church retreat out at Mt. Lebanon Camp. This is one event that I wholly look forward to every year—just being able to be out there and fellowship with the body and talk to people that you might not get the opportunity to talk to very much is so encouraging! I met one of my favorite people currently at church retreat last year!

If you have not heard of him yet, this is Advait, a student at UTD. He is an international student from India who I’ve been meeting with since the beginning of last school year (2023-2024). He is not a Christian, but has been faithfully coming to The Grove (large group), core (small group), and meeting with other people from the community one-on-one. I believe that Jesus is changing his heart little by little every day. He went from being vehemently opposed to stepping foot in a church, to coming to church once a month, being able to quote scripture, and having a vision of inviting people to FOCUS. Though he still would not say he is a Christian, he is now starting FOJ (Focus on Jesus), a 10-week Bible study that FOCUS created that focuses on Jesus and the gospel. Would you pray for Advait as he continues to learn about Jesus and the good news?

Wow, it was so sunny when I took this picture… this is Nahom and Daijon, two students at UTD. I’ve told you about Daijon before, but did you know that Daijon (and Nahom) attended SICM (Student Institute of Campus Ministry) this past May? As a recap, SICM is a week-long training that we bring our potential student leaders to in May or June to learn more about how to minister intentionally on their campus and facilitate cores (small groups). They are both now co-facilitating their own cores this school year and have grown in so many dimensions.

Funny story, this picture was taken at The Biscuit Bar in Plano, where we waited over an hour for our food (close to an hour and a half). They were so understaffed and behind on orders and we helped take out the trash and clean up the dining area for them while we waited for our food.