Goodbye Yesterday
And just like that, 2024 is over! God has moved in huge ways in my life and in the lives of everyone around me throughout this year. I am so excited to see what He continues to do this year and cannot wait to be a part of His greater plan. I am also incredibly thankful for all of you who help me get to be on campus daily and are a part of our mission to reach college students across the DFW metroplex!
Christmas Party
Each year, our staff puts on a Christmas party for our students and it is one of my favorite things we do to wrap up the semester. My parents always made Christmas so special growing up and I love getting to celebrate the holidays with some of my favorite people. This year our theme was Elf and I was so pumped to be able to bring one of my all time favorite Christmas movies alive for our students. We had plenty of Elf inspired parts of our party from Buddy the Elf himself to a snowball fight to snowflake making to Elf spaghetti. To say it was a blast would be an understatement! Parties like this one remind me that getting to be a part of what God is doing is so fun and that we are called to have a child-like faith and wonder. There is something incredibly rewarding about getting to celebrate the birth of Jesus with college students while having so much fun and being silly! Would you join me in praying that their breaks have been restful and will continue to be restful?
Apprentice Sermons
Each fall, the team of new apprentices give sermons titled “This is My Gospel” and essentially have 20ish minutes to tell the rest of the staff team how God has transformed their life. This year there are five apprentices and they all did an incredible job helping us see the heart of God and how He has transformed all of their lives. In one of the sermons, the person giving it talked a ton about thankfulness and how being thankful for what God has given us transforms our hearts to contentment. In another one of the sermons, the person giving it talked some about the flame that drives us all and posed an analogy between a hand-held lighter that ultimately will run out of fluid and the eternal flame that comes from Jesus. I felt incredibly convicted by this analogy because I often want to run back to my hand-held lighter and put the control of the flame back in my hands, knowing good and well that the fluid will eventually run out. Another person talked about “mustard seed moments”- decisions of faith that change the trajectory of our lives and the lives of those around us. That idea- a moment of mustard seed faith- has got me thinking a lot about how decisions that we make out of trust in what God is doing really have the possibility to affect the lives of generations to come. Would you join me in praying that our staff would really think about the ways that God has transformed our lives and continue to be people who live that out daily?
End of Year Thoughts
I said it before, but it is really strange to me that 2024 is over and I am coming into this new year with a renewed sense of gratitude and excitement for what God is doing. The word I feel like God put on my heart for 2024 was joy- and man did he show me that joy is everlasting and there is something to be joyful about in every circumstance. I have prayed continually this year that God would show me how to be marked by joy in all seasons and that I would be able to rejoice in what God is doing in the lives of those around me. I am not entirely sure where God is going to do this coming year but I am excited to be able to do it with people that have pushed me to look more like Him, to be able to be joyful in all seasons, and to live in the freedom that comes from God alone. So, would you join me in praying that 2025 would be a year that is marked by living in the freedom that Jesus offers?
Until next time,
Jessica :)
P.S. Waldo was in the random pictures of November! Can you find him this month?
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