Summer Update!

July 09, 2021

Summer Update!

Hello, all! Sweet summertime is here!

Summer looks different than it did between college semesters, especially working full-time for a college that has such a long break! Let me lay out how Summer months play out as a full-time campus pastor!

School lets out in May, which means a lot of the students in our ministry go home to be with their families for Summer break. Some of the students live in this area, but a lot of them live in other areas of Texas or out of state. With a lot of my work hours being dedicated to being on campus and meeting up with students, our Summer hours are allocated towards different aspects of full-time ministry. The biggest responsibility for the Summer is fundraising for the following school year!

As most of you know, our full-time ministers raise the cost of our salaries in order to have the availability to devote all of our hours towards being on campus with students. During the summer, we have more time to connect with our ministry partners and invite new people to join our teams to partner with us in this piece of God's kingdom. It's a really exciting time!

We also spend time doing some staff development! All of the women on staff across our campuses meet up once a week for lunch and games to continue to strengthen our relationships. Our women's staff for UTD specifically has been meeting up once a week for that development as well. As a whole, our UTD team has met to start brainstorming about the beginning of the school year and events/things we want to do to engage the campus, especially with things going back to normal post-Covid! We are very excited to be back on campus this year!

The rest of our time is dedicated to students that are in town, checking in on them or doing Focus on Jesus bible studies/book clubs. We also do a large-group meeting every Thursday, with all of our campuses combined! It's a smaller group since a lot of students are home with their families, but it's fun for all of us to get to be together.

So although I am still working full-time hours, the workload feels more restful and my schedule is more flexible. I really enjoy these months post-May and leading up to August, because I am free to take it a little easier after a busy year before we start ANOTHER busy year.

August will be here before we know it, and that's when we really kick things into high gear! We host events every night on campus for incoming students, we begin our large group meetings (Friday Night Fellowship), and meet with lots of incoming freshmen to try and give them community early on in their college experience! I love August, but it really is crazy :)

Please start praying for the hearts of the students coming on campus in August, that they would be open to our community, and that we would be ready to welcome them in and show them Jesus. I can't wait to write my blog a couple months from now with all the good news and awesome things that God does!

Thanks for your continued support. I couldn't do it without you!!

Here are some pictures from my Summer up to now. :)