Many Exciting Happenings at FOCUS

November has been an exciting month for our ministry at UNT.  The semester may be wrapping up, but that doesn't mean we're slowing down.  Check out what's been going on:

Halloween Party!  (Okay, that was October, but it was fun anyway)  Here are some of our crazy students:



Our party was a lot of fun, but it was also a great chance for our students from different Cores to get to know each other and build friendships.  Oh, and my team won the pumpkin carving contest with our realistic Brad-O-Lantern, depicting our campus pastor in profile.

Pizza Theology!  On November 20th, around 200 FOCUS students from all four campus gathered at UTD to learn about relating to popular media like music and movies.  Randy Heffner, our guest speaker and the father of one of our long-time student leaders at UTD, talked about how to extract truth from movies and music that seem to have very little to do with God.  It was a thought-provoking topic and a great opportunity for students from all of our campuses to get to know each other.

In addition to being a part of these big events, I have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with a few girls to do the Focus on Jesus study.  I've been meeting with Lakai for about five weeks now.  She grew up in church, but she was never really challenged her to study the Bible on her own.  Each lesson in FOJ has homework, and the last homework Lakai was supposed to complete required her to read a few verses from Matthew and apply them to her life.  When we got together to talk about the homework, she confessed she hadn't really done it.  Instead, she had gotten so interested in reading about Jesus that she had read the first half of Matthew, and she had a ton of questions!  She even wanted to know about some of the references to teachings in the Old Testament.  It's so exciting to see people develop curiosity and hunger for the truth.  i can't wait to meet with Lakai again and see what else she's learning!

Not every one-on-one study goes that well.  One of the girls I had been meeting with consistently recently decided she didn't want to do FOJ with me anymore.  She didn't give me a clear reason, but I think she may not have been ready for the challenge of living as a disciple.  She told me she found another ministry, so please pray for her that she would find a community that exhorts her to be a true disciple of Jesus.

Even with the ups and downs of doing campus ministry, there is always something exciting to look forward to.  In mid-January, students from all four campuses will gather in Bridgeport for our Winter Camp.  This camp is a three-night retreat that gives our students the chance to build meaningful relationships and be refreshed for the upcoming spring semester.  Every year, many students say that Winter Camp is where they first felt like they were really a part of our community.  The only downside of Winter Camp is that it costs students $135; that can seem like a fortune for many of our students.  FOCUS always lets anyone attend regardless of their ability to pay, but that means we need money to sponsor those students.  Please pray for our Winter Camp, and if you would be able to sponsor one or more students, send me a quick email at kelly@anyfocus.org.

That's all for now.  Merry Christmas! (I'm already listening to Christmas music)

Unworthy Servants

The semester is more than halfway through, and I have been keeping busy at UNT.  A couple of weeks ago, I preached my very first sermon.  The audience was only five people: the other interns and Ronnie, who teaches our intern class.  My assignment was to preach out of the gospel of Luke, so I chose Luke 17:1-10.  This passage consists of four short teachings that I thought were especially meaningful for our group of interns.

I want to share the words of Jesus in verses 7-10 with you:

“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’?  Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’?  Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?  So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Now I know most of us today don’t like to think about servitude.  It’s some form of cruelty from the distant past that we’re too progressive to engage in these days.  But when I think about how we should relate to God, I imagine a servant.  Yes, we are also friends of God and adopted sons and daughters of the kingdom, but those titles are undeserved gifts from God.  Our constant duty is to be God’s servants.

That’s what I’m doing as an intern for Focus.  I serve God when I do one-on-one studies with young women, when I plan lessons for Core meetings, when I plan events, and even when I do the tedious but necessary administrative tasks that help run our ministry.  

Luke 17:10 says, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”  I haven’t even come close to doing everything God has told me to do.  But in everything, I remember that I am an unworthy servant, only doing my duty.

IELI Conversation Partners

UNT has a unique program called the Intensive English Language Institute, where students from all over the world can master English in preparation for enrollment at American universities.  The IELI program attracts hundreds of motivated students from countries like China, Japan, India, and Saudi Arabia.  In order to help these students improve their conversational skills, the IELI program joins students with volunteers, known as their "conversation partners," who meet with them once a week just to talk.  This year I signed up to be a conversation partner, so I have two awesome girls to meet with on a regular basis.

The first girl I met with is a young lady from Saudi Arabia who wants to study environmental engineering.  She comes from a large family.  All four of her siblings are either currently studying in the U.S. or plan to do so later.  She lives with an uncle who is also studying at a nearby university.  When I asked her what she likes most about living in the U.S., she replied, "The freedom."  You see, where she's from, women are not allowed to drive cars.  Anywhere she went, she would have to be accompanied by her father or one of her brothers.  She told me that even with a university degree, she would not be able to get a good job in her own country; all of the most challenging and important jobs are reserved for men.  I feel so sad that smart, capable young women like her have so little to look forward to in Saudi Arabia.

My other conversation partner is from Japan.  She's already facing some of the difficulties of living far away from her family.  Her father is in the hospital with some kind of lung problems and will probably be having surgery this week, and she can't go visit him.  What a sense of helplessness she must be feeling right now.  She told me that she wants to become a Christian because going to church and praying helps her feel stronger in these tough times.  How amazing it is to see the sprout of a seed someone else has planted in this young woman's life!  I am so thrilled about meeting with her again and talking to her about God.

Please remember these two amazing girls as you pray for me and the UNT campus!