January Ministry Update: Back in Action!

    Happy new year, everyone! I hope your January has been filled with a lot of laughs and a lot of love! I am really excited to tell you about how the start of the semester has gone.

Winter Retreat!

    Every year FOCUS has Winter Retreat - a 4-day event where students from across all the different FOCUS campuses come together to grow in faith, meet new people, and refocus before the semester starts. This MLK weekend we met at a retreat center a couple of hours away from the metroplex and over 700 students came, making it the largest winter retreat yet! I describe the retreat kinda like our Super Bowl - we have longer sermons, some 1-on-1 walk and talks, and really awesome sermons. Winter Retreat was always a highlight of my year when I was a student and it was so cool to help put it all together now as a staff member!

    The theme of the retreat this year was “Following Jesus,” and I know the messages from the weekend will pay dividends this year. The guys in my core were really moved and I am excited to see how they will take the next step in putting their faith into action! Please pray that the weekend would continue to have an impact on the spring semester and that students would continue to look for ways to follow Christ each and every day. Here are some pictures from the retreat!

Core and TNF!     Our core is back and bigger than ever. We are still meeting at 6:00 on Monday evenings, so please continue to pray for us! I am so proud of these guys and the way they have faithfully invested in their relationship with Christ and in community with each other. It has been an honor to get to know each one of them and see them grow closer to the Lord. We have big plans for this semester - the plan right now is to spend the first couple of weeks going through 1 Timothy and to spend some time afterward talking about prayer, worship, and other ways we get to connect with God.     Here are some pictures from a little burger night/campfire I hosted for the core over the break and a shot of us from our first Bible study of the semester on the 27th. As many of you know the 26th was my birthday (Thank you so much for all the birthday well wishes!), so the guys surprised me with a homemade birthday cake and a pinata!     TNF (Thursday Night Fellowship) is back in full swing as well! We are back in the Cougar Cafe this semester and have begun a sermon series called “Disciples are…” Each week we will talk about a different way we as disciples should imitate Christ, such as “Disciples are Humble,” “Disciples are Generous,” “Disciples are Sacrificial,” etc. I am praying it will be a meaningful series for our students and a powerful reminder to look to Jesus for life to the full. We meet at 7:30 on Thursday nights, so please be praying for us! Here is a picture of the first TNF of the semester. Thank you!     As many of you know, January is sort of a hard time of the year for me and my family with the anniversary of my little brother Micah’s accident, but I have been comforted by so many of you reaching out, praying for us, and for the love and support over the last two years. In many ways, Micah’s passing is a big part of my drive to do campus ministry and has become a big part of my testimony, so I want to honor him in the midst of the mixed emotions of grief. God has used so many of you to get me and my family through this tough time and I can’t thank you enough for that! In honor of Micah, here is one of my favorite pictures of him!     We have begun taking a class over the New Testament as a part of the apprenticeship and spent some time this week reading through the Gospel of Mark. I really love Jesus’s interaction with the children in Mark 10: “People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.” - Mark 10:13-16     Getting to see so many college students approach Christ with childlike wonder has been incredible. The Spirit is at work at Collin College and in the lives of so many young people - in the DFW metroplex and beyond! Thank you so much for investing in His kingdom and in these students by supporting me! God has been using FOCUS and our team at Collin to do some really incredible things.     Hopefully you have all received your end-of-year giving report - it should have all of your donations to FOCUS from the 2024 calendar year listed out with a little pamphlet on what all our ministry is up to. (If you look closely a certain UTD graduate is pictured on the front cover!) If you do not receive your report in the next few days or if there are any issues/discrepancies with your report, please let me know. Until then, thank you for your support and may His peace be with you! In Christ, Mick P.S. Here is a student testimony from Michael, a senior at UNT!