Kevin Pike Ministry Blog #26

 WELCOME WEEK

    Hey everyone! The new school year has started and wow it has been a lot of fun! God has been doing some great things on campus just after one week at school! For the first week of school, our entire staff at Collin spent everyday on one of the campuses to talk to students and invite them to come check out FOCUS. I can't wait to share with y'all about Welcome Week and how it went, here we go!

Welcome Week: Monday

    On Monday, I was at the Plano campus and we had our "First Day of School Photos!". For this event we made a large photo-booth that looked like a notebook piece of paper and had students take their photo in front of it like most kids used to do when they were younger. It was a great way to welcome students and get them excited for the first day. We also handed them book markers that had all of our info from FOCUS on it so they could keep it and check it out when they had the time too. Here are some photos from the event that day!

Tuesday

    

    On this day, I was at the Wylie campus for our "Taco & Bad Tattoo Tuesday" event. We wanted to give out free tacos and free bad "tattoos". Bad tattoos are my favorite as we get to do something fun like draw a dragon on a student but then also have the time to ask intentional questions while they wait for it to be completed. For the tacos we called Chiloso, and in all their graciousness, who donated 500 free breakfast tacos to our event! That is unheard of! We were able to feed all three campuses that day and we had leftovers too! It reminds me of Jesus feeding the 5,000 with the two fish and five loaves of bread. 

Wednesday 

    

    Since it was the middle of the week, we wanted to get students caffeinated and ready to go to their classes on Wednesday by handing out free iced coffee. This was a hit as students love their coffee and love free things. We had the station set up to where students would make their own iced coffee and while they did that we were able to talk to them and invite them to our ministry!

Thursday 

    Most of y'all know that we have our weekly large group event on Thursday nights called TNF (Thursday Night Fellowship), so we wanted to amp that up as much as possible for Welcome Week. We had a block party an hour before TNF to get students excited and pumped up. We had a free ice cream truck, massive volleyball, spike ball, nine square in the air, and bubble machines! It was super fun and it got the students outside and playing games! 

    That night we had TNF and it was great! We had 101 students show up to sing worship music and listen to a sermon! Normally we had around 70-80 students last semester show up, so this was a huge blessing! We all had a great time and it seemed like the students really enjoyed it! 

Friday 

    

    On Friday morning we had breakfast with our student leaders which was a nice change of pace. Then we had Corefa prep day with them in the afternoon. A corefa is what we call our student leaders since they lead a Core every week, which is our term for small groups. This prep day allowed us to teach them how to lead a good core, how to outreach to your classmates, and how to be leader like Jesus. It was great to see all of our student leaders take this opportunity to be a leader very seriously. Then that night we had a volleyball game at 6pm at the student dorms. It was such a great time with a good turnout, a lot of students came! 

Student Retreat 

    The weekend before our Welcome Week we had a first ever Collin Student Retreat in Jacksboro, TX. This was to get the students excited for being on our FOCUS team and get them feeling like they knew the staff and the students that would be partnering with them as missionaries on campus this year. We invited all of our student leaders and also our returning students who weren't leaders but who we saw potential to be pillars in our community. It was super fun and really got us excited for the new year! 

Thank you 

    Thank you so much to each of you for your generous donations and prayers to FOCUS. Your support means more than words can express and allows us to continue creating a welcoming space for students to explore their faith and grow spiritually. Your kindness and generosity have a profound impact on our community, enabling us to share the love and message of Christ with even more people. Thank you for believing in our mission and for being such a vital part of our journey. Your contributions truly make a difference, and we are incredibly grateful for your partnership in this important work!

Prayer Requests

    We had such a great welcome week and so many students have been reached out to and invited to our small and large group events! But, that doesn't always mean they will show up or become Christian. So if y'all could pray that the Lord will soften their hearts and encourage them to either show up to our small groups or find a church and trust in Jesus that would mean a lot. We don't want the high of this welcome week and our fun events to wear off on the students and make them stop coming. Thank you so much! 

    P.S. This is a student testimony of one of our Collin students who is a Corefa this year! Your donations and prayers help impact students like him!