Closing Time! (April/May Update)

 Man, I can’t believe the school year has almost come to a close! 

April

April is a busy month. Spring Break happens and then after that, it’s basically a race to the finish. We have lots of events to close out the year including an End-of-Year Party, our last grove of the school year, and wrapping up cores (small groups)!

This group of girls below is my Peer Team! Every year, my favorite thing to do is mentor our Core leaders. Every Core has two student leaders that volunteer anywhere between 10 and 15 hours a week to leader development, planning and executing core, spending time with their core, etc. A lot of them also serve in various roles like worship team, setup team, greeting team, and scripture reading team for The Grove on Friday nights. 

I had the absolute sweetest group of girls this year. They were all so life-giving and sweet to me!

Top, L—>R: Kaitlyn, Jaryn, Mykayla, Taitum
Bottom, L—>R: Maddie, Grace, me, Briana, Kathryn
MY GIRLS

This school year was such a gift to me. Every year I meet with lots of different people, and I feel like this year, our ministry is in a really good groove. We have so many college students pumped up and excited about God, about worshiping Him, and about telling their friends about Him! 

Here’s some more pics from April! 

We host a Parking Lot Graduation for all our seniors, and this is one of my friends, Megan! She’s graduating and I will miss her :(

Maddie and Grace <3

We had an intramural team play soccer, and they did SO well! Here’s all of them and their fan club from our ministry :)

                                    A video from our Friday night service, the grove. 200 college students                                                                                                 worshiping Jesus! 

May

In May, we are still wrapping up the school year and saying bye to students who move home over the Summer :( It’s weird to go from seeing them every week, sometimes multiple days a week, to telling them you’ll see them in August! 

From our end of year party! My peer team <3 

Grace and Maddie led together this year! 

Kaitlyn and Jaryn <3 

Mykayla and Kathryn <3 

Briana and Taitum <3 

A couple of our students had a dance final that a bunch of people from the ministry went to! 

One of the most noteworthy things we do in May every year is take a group of students to a leadership conference in Bellingham, WA called “Student Institute of Campus Ministry”, or SICM for short. This is across all of our FOCUS campuses in the metroplex, so we end up bringing about 150 people! We take them to Seattle first to sightsee for a few days. Then, we bus/drive up to Bellingham for the rest of the week and begin the conference. Each day is about 9-5 with leadership development classes to prepare potential Core leaders for the Fall. It is tiring, but so much fun! I went to SICM as a student in 2016… It’s wild that here I am, 9 years later, going as a staff person for FOCUS. God is SO good! Here are some pics from that trip! 

That’s it for these months! I’m excited for a slower pace, to rest and recharge over the Summer while still spending time with students in the area, and with my UTD team planning for next school year! Thank you for all your support and prayers. Love you all! 

- Kylie <3