Declaring His Goodness

Winter Camp 2017

We had our yearly Winter Camp at the beginning of January. It was a very special weekend. We talked about the church through history and our role in it today. We spent time singing, dancing, declaring his goodness, studying his word and lots of playing and fellowship. It was an awesome weekend! We talked a lot about how as a church we are a family and when we gather, we gather as brothers and sisters in Christ to be with our Father. I believe many were healed and found a home within the family of God that weekend.

When I got back from Winter Camp I was showing these pictures above and below to one of our advisers at NCTC. I was thanking her for helping us in building a ministry at NCTC. She said, "Oh yea, I had one of your students come by my office the other day to tell me how thankful he is for FOCUS. He said in high school he didn't have any friends and got made fun of a lot. He told me he was so thankful to have a group of friends here at NCTC and that he got to go to Winter Camp!" How awesome! Keep praying for our NCTC ministry. NCTC also gave us $1,000 to help pay for students to attend Winter Camp this year! God is really working on that campus, not just in the lives of the students, but the administration and professors too.

Our NCTC group at Winter Camp!

During the worship songs at Winter Camp I organized some flags to be painted on and waved. We used the flags to praise God for what he has done for our community and to declare what we want to see him do within our community. So the students during free time painted and wrote their responses and thoughts on those two topics. Waving flags was tied with our theme of understanding the history of the church and our place in it today. In waving flags we were able to declare the good things of God alongside those who have fought for his truth throughout history.

NCTC Outreach 

Since we've been back on campus we've been doing a good amount of outreach. I wanted to share this picture because of how encouraging it was to me. At NCTC on Monday we had two display boards where we posed a question and had students write and share their responses. We asked, "What makes a human a human?" It's a deep question. It's questions like this that really get students talking and that open doors to build relationships and opportunities to share our faith. NCTC is a small campus and having this many students stop to share was so encouraging. We met lots of students! 

Student Testimony

"Before coming to college, I was in a desperate search for friendships. I had been the unfortunate recipient of a drug-induced fight. One night, people who I thought were my friends got high on cocaine while we were hanging out. All it took was dispute over petty differences to send one of them over the edge, and it ended with me getting choked until I passed out. Thankfully, God brought me through that alive. However, this incident led to bitterness, rumors, and the loss of mutual friends. So, I ended high school not having many people that I considered friends. After all that, I was ready for college.

Going into my Freshman year at UTD, I made it a priority to seek out friendships and Christian community. I found out about an event that FOCUS was having during welcome week and went to check it out. There I met Sagar Ghandi who, after just one conversation, invited me over to his house to play FIFA (a football videogame).  I was taken aback by this generous invitation and willingness to invite me into his life when he knew very little about me. I decided to go to Sagar’s Core and get more involved in FOCUS, where I developed strong friendships. Praise God for Sagar Ghandi’s invitation, the friendships I have made, and for how much leaders in FOCUS have taken time out of their busy schedules to pour into a broken and unimpressive sinner like me ever since!"

Josh Carpp (Senior, University of Texas at Dallas, Mechanical Engineering)

Prayer

Be praying for our first event at SMU! Pray that we would meet students who want to partner with us in what we are doing there.  

Be praying for our upcoming Pizza Theology on Race. Pizza Theology is a lecture we do once a semester on an in-depth topic and then we break to eat pizza together. Pray that God would give students a deeper understanding and open the door for conversations in the future.