End of year thankfulness

Our last leader meeting of the school year! These students spent a great deal of time and energy building up the community. They planned worship, cores groups, one-on-ones, and did their best to disciple their peers. God has been so pleased to use this wacky bunch of kiddos to spread his gospel of peace and maturity. We all shared stories from the year, and mostly laughed at how weird Rhett (my fellow apprentice) is.

This is my last week of official 2017-2018 meet-ups with the 7 girls in my peer team. It has been such a blast getting to know them. Here, Kennedy and Jacy and I are about to think about how cool God's plan is. We marveled at what his perspective must be like, and let ourselves be grateful that he lets us be apart of his story.

Here's Stephanie and Devan at our Garden Party Formal. In our last 2:1, we got to think about our tendencies towards legalism and encourage one another to trust in God's grace.

Stacey and Ingrid never fail to make me laugh. At their last core, they decided to wear matching pjs and make everyone breakfast. In this picture, their prepping for a King's Kaleidoscope concert by dancing in the kitchen. Their friendship has been such a sweet gift to our community.

Matt made us coffee for one of our staff meetings. This is the team, minus Brittany (who just had her baby)!!

The newest member of our staff, our little blueberry, Willow. We're all in love with her.

Peer team at the Garden Party. I couldn't stay still long enough to take the "cute" picture that they all wanted. This is the closest we could get. 

Reagann and Brittany will be joining our Denton team as apprentices next year!! I'm so excited to get to work with my friends! God is so kind!!

God is doing amazing things in our hearts and on our campuses! We just received a $12,000 gift to use towards outreach for this upcoming year, so please be praying that God would tell us how he wants us to use that! Thank you for all of your prayers and support!

We're about to take our upcoming leaders to the Student Institute of Campus Ministry (SICM) in Washington! Please be praying that God would impact their lives and give them a vision for how he wants to work with them! 

Love you all! 

Your apprentice for 1 more month, 

Kristen 

"I first became involved with FOCUS when I was just starting out at Collin College. I had been living in Nigeria for a few years, so I was walking into a college experience where I didn’t know anyone. I worried a lot about not being able to find any meaningful friendships while I was there. So it came as a surprise when some old friends of mine, Loré and Gibby Yessuff, invited me to a 

Thursday Night Fellowship. From that first night of fellowship, I made more friends than I could have prayed for. People asked me to sit with them, scheduled time to hang out with me, got to know me, and challenged me as a disciple. It became clear to me that this was not only an example of authentic Christian community; this was the way Jesus called us to do friendships—intentional, genuine and loving.

Through the many friendships I’ve been blessed with in FOCUS, God has changed my fear and worry of not having any friends into a desire to grow and develop friendships at TWU. I am beyond thankful when I see what he is doing in the lives of students here and for the example of Christian friendship that I’m now able to extend to others."

Bekwele Wodi

Texas Women’s University

Psychology

Sophomore