MERRY MINISTRY

 

Merry Ministry!

December was a short but fulfilling month of ministry! Our students were busy finishing up their finals for the year and getting ready for the Winter break. While our students were busy, their campus pastors were busy as well. This last month marks the end of the 2022 year and a halfway point in the pastoral apprenticeship for myself and my fellow apprentices. This school year has been an exciting time to watch how God has worked in the lives of our students and I am even more excited to see how he continues to work through this next year.

Christmas Party

What would the holiday season be without a little Christmas Party? Or in our case a very large party! Seeing as how we have about 200 students in our ministry at UTD, our Christmas parties are quite the event to plan. This year I got to see behind the scenes with the planning of the Christmas party and boy were there a lot of things to do. Thankfully I work with an amazing team that loves our students so well. They really are superstars and I am so thankful to get to work on a team with them. I also got to snap a few photos with my small group guys at the party! These guys have been so fun to meet with this year and it's been a pleasure to see God working in their lives. 

More Fun Things in December 

This month I got to host and organize two of my own events to celebrate the Holidays. When I was in high school I remember that my choir director would always host these really fun scavenger hunts where we went out and took silly pictures and videos of whatever was on the scavenger hunt list. I thought I'd give it a try without students and it went well! We got a lot of students to go out and be a little silly on this scavenger hunt and they didn't disappoint with their pictures and videos! 

I also hosted an event where we walked around a well-known neighborhood in Plano called Deerfield to see the houses directed with their incredible Christmas lights. Every year this neighborhood puts on a show with its lights and this year was no different. It was so sweet to see our students come out and spend their last day in town together having fun looking at Christmas lights!

The Reason for the Season

This month we have been going through a series of devotionals over the Winter break with our students. The first two weeks of these devotionals were centered around the birth of Jesus. I found that these devotionals were extremely helpful in reminding me what the Christmas season is all about. One morning as I was doing one of the devotionals I thought about just how unfathomable it was that the creator of the universe chose to dwell among his people as a baby. I have two little baby nieces that I've gotten to hold recently and it was incredible to think that Jesus was once as small and as helpless as they were. The king of the world was born as a little infant in a manger, it's very humbling to think about!

Thank You For Your Support!

Once again I can not thank you enough for choosing to invest in what God is doing at UTD this year through me. This ministry has meant so much to me over the past seven years and to get to serve students and bring them into a ministry that loves them, values them, and wants them to know Christ really means the world to me. I am so appreciative of how your generosity. I think often about just how lucky I am to have this as my job and how grateful I am to have you as a ministry partner. Thank you and Happy New Year!    

Student Testimony