A Joy Filled January
January came and went! I hope all of you had a fantastic start to the new year! I pray that this first month has been filled with opportunities to see Jesus in people and in all situations, and that you have been able to see God moving in your own life.
January Recap
This month, we jumped right back into the semester with Staff Retreat, starting a new round of apprentice classes, Winter Retreat, Core, Friday Night Fellowship, FOJs, and many other things in between! My core and FOJs have started back up again and it has been so exciting to hear how God continues to work in their lives and how they have seen Him moving in all of their relationships over the break. This month was truly incredible and I cannot wait to tell you all about it!
Each semester, our staff goes on a retreat to reconnect with God and each other before we have another busy semester. This staff retreat, we went to a venue just outside of Bernet, Tx and it was so nice to have a moment to get away, away from the noise and busyness of everyday life, to recenter on what is most important. Over our break, we were asked to read a book called To Love as God Loves by Roberta Bondi and during our retreat, we listened to sermons over the book and discussed things that stood out and that we are hoping to hold onto. Something that stood out to me over the course of this book and retreat was that the closer we move towards God’s perfect love, the more compassion we have for people, and the better we are able to see people as God sees them. I thought this truth that everything should come out of love was a super helpful reminder to me that God first loves us and through that we get to love others.
Winter Retreat was equally as special and has been so vital to the ways that I have thought about things after it. This year, we brought in a guest speaker, Dr. Daniel Lee, who works for Fuller Seminary in California. Dr. Lee came to us to talk about disruptive grace, and it was incredible. One thing that I have not stopped thinking about since we left camp was the idea that God delights in us. To some, this may seem like a simple truth, but it was an incredible reminder that God loves us as we are, not who we want to be. It was also so fun to be at Retreat with hundreds of students who are so excited about Jesus and all that He is going to do in their lives this semester. Would you join me in praying for them this semester- that God would show up in big ways and that they would seek them in everything?
Celebrations
This month, we also got the opportunity to celebrate so many people! Something that God has put on my heart recently is that I have become sort of a grinch when it comes to celebrating people, including myself, which is far different from the way that I grew up. I have so many fond memories of celebrating all sorts of things and I am on a mission to get back to that place this year. So, that started this month! I got to celebrate my birthday in the best way- at our first Friday Night Fellowship with some of my favorite people- and got to celebrate some of my dearest friends' birthdays over the last few weeks. I am committed to celebrating the big and the small this year and I hope that it could be something that you would pray about committing to as well!
Students at UTD usually do not have a lot of incentive to show up at events that the school hosts and when I was a student, I definitely didn’t go to most things that the school hosted. BUT, the one thing that I did go to was all of the intramural sports games that knew people playing in. It has now become a tradition for a group of people and I to come with posters and cheer as loud as we can for our people! I really think that God delights in us having fun with each other in community! What makes this so much sweeter is that, while at dinner with some of my dad’s college friends, I found out that he, too, loved intramurals and was so excited to share that with others. It really is so sweet to find out how similar my dad was to me and get to celebrate that with people that he loved so deeply. Would you join me in praying that the students at UTD find community and that they would see that they are deeply loved and cared for?
Thanks again for joining me in ministry this year and for being so supportive of all that God is doing at UTD! Your prayers and support have been so apparent and appreciated!
Until next time,
Jessica :)
P.S. Can you find Waldo?
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