Kevin Pike Apprenticeship Blog #8

Start of the New Year 

    Hey everyone, hope you all are following your New Year's resolutions. I did not make any so you can not hold me accountable. Anyways, the staff team at Collin has been blessed to have a great start to the year!

    We had our annual Winter Retreat this year which was a huge blessing! This is where all the students from all the campuses come together and spend three days and four nights with each other to learn and grow closer to God, what could be better than that? The pictures below do not even come close to embodying the love, excitement, and thrill of being there. I was blessed to have 90% of our small group come which was a huge blessing; this allowed us to get some quality time together and have great conversations. This year's sermon series was on 1 John and how love is crucial to being a Christian. Here is the link to the sermons on Spotify if any of y'all need something new to listen to! https://open.spotify.com/show/5yrx4jslg0f9tmNO7S0eVX

    














    Tuesday's Outreach has been going great. It is a new semester, meaning tons of new students to reach out to. Since it has been so cold, we have stayed inside and invited students to play games like Uno with us. This has been an easy way to get to know students naturally and become friends with them. This month, we plan on asking students questions like, "Why do you think Jesus is still relevant after 2000 years?" and "What is power?". When we think about it, it really is incredible that Jesus is still being followed after 2000 years. So why is that? We want them to think about why that is and there might be more to this Jesus guy than they think. 

    We started our NT (New Testament) class this past month, which has been excellent. The goal of the course is to learn the history, literature, and theology of the 1st-century Jewish people. This is so that we can read the Bible from their perspective and see just how impactful and life-altering Jesus's ministry was to the ancient people. Most of the class so far has been learning about just how evil the world was before Jesus and how his teachings were so impactful. Kindness, sacrifice, and love is real power contrary to the sword which the Romans were oppressing everyone with. I could go on forever but the more I learn about the history of the ancient world, the more of God's goodness I see. 

    Thank you all so much for your donations and support. I truly have been so blessed by each and every one of you. I could not be doing any of this without your generous donations and prayers. So many students have also been blessed by your donations as well. I ask that you pray for the students as they start classes back up so that they can get back into a rhythm of a schedule and make good grades. I also ask for prayers for all the FOCUS staff as they live out the Great Commission. Thank you all so much and may God bless you! 

    P.S. Here is a testimony from one of the many students that have been touched by the FOCUS community. This work is happening all over the DFW area and is directly influenced by your support.

    




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