January! New Year!

 Hello all!

I am writing this blog post sitting in the sun. Praise the Lord. Honestly, I am quite affected by the winter at times because of the cold and darkness. On days I have meetings the whole time, I will walk into the Student Union at UTD in the morning with the sun, and leave when it is dark outside. I feel a literal thawing in my soul as we enter into the Spring. I just love being outside. 

Starting this next semester has definitely been eventful. We had our big Winter Retreat (photos below), almost immediately followed by a long freeze that shut down campus for multiple days. Let me walk through this month with you all in photos! Before the freeze, we managed to do some (very cold) out reach on campus, handing out coffee to new students. 

It is around this time that the wheel of ministry starts turning itself. We spend a lot of time investing in the lives of students as we welcome them into our ministry, and for many, start having spiritual conversations with them for the first time. Now, we see them more and more hanging out with each other outside of our weekly meetings and encourage each other in the faith. We have started to do a weekly memory verse in core, hopeful that scripture will become written on their hearts as they talk to each other.

First core back! We have started to go through the beginning of 1 Corinthians. The first few chapters are just a big reflection from Paul about the cross. That ultimately, God's love, wisdom, character, entire being was revealed to us through Jesus on the cross. I believe how we interact with the world, what we find impressive, who we show love to, all comes form a clear understanding of what God showed us on the cross. 

Our core guys at Winter Retreat. We had over 800 people there total from all of our campuses! I may not get tons of sleep, but this retreat is always worth it. New friendships are made, and we get to spend hours throughout the different sessions learning about God on a college level. 

This year we had a guest speaker, Mary Solomon, come teach through the entire book of Genesis. Marty has a podcast called the BEMA podcast that has a heavy focus on reading the scriptures from an Eastern perspective. To really try and understand the prominent cultures and religions of the ancient world and how God was moving and revealing his character in that specific culture, to get a right view on him now. His teachings were so good! If you are interested, I would recommend his podcast or feel free to go to our Spotify (Fellowship of Christian University Students) to listen to the sessions.

One value our community holds is to honor diverse styles of worship. As our community grows, we see more and more of that. Whether a student comes from a background that only sings hymns, worships in a different language, worships God expressively, or kneeling down, there's students everywhere in between. Something we did this year at winter retreat that was really impactful for me to hear is we sang the chorus of a worship song over and over, but invited students who spoke another language to sing it in their native language. Over 20 students went up to sing, all worshipping in a different language to represent people around the world. It felt like just a small glimpse of Revelation 7:9.

As a college student, I loved days off for snow or ice. There was little to do than just hang out with your friends. I was able to make to campus a few of those days to eat in the dining hall and play a lot of Imposter (iykyk). The roads stayed slick for multiple days as a layer of ice just froze on top, but I would consider myself a competent driver in ice. No one else was really on the roads anyway....

Hopefully I can link a video to the photo above if you click on it. It's just a couple of minutes long to show the behind the scenes of ministry during the week of ice. 

FOJ studies are still going strong! Samuel and I finished this past week. This has been such a fun study to get to do. He asks good questions, but I can also tell he carries these conversations with those around him during his week. Two of his friends now are interested in studying the Bible as well! I have 9 other studies going right now, but honestly, for every one I start, it seems two other people are interested in starting. God really is bringing a harvest at UTD right now. Please pray that God continues to grow up faithful disciples and leaders in our ministry as we continue more of these studies. 

Thank you all for the love and encouragement you show me. Please keep our ministry in your prayers. Let me know how I can be praying for you. Talk to yall soon.

Love,

Paul M