March Ministry Update: Spring has Sprung!

    Hey everyone! It is hard to believe that it is the end of March already. Here is what has been going on at the Collin ministry this month!

TNF

    We have been moving and grooving through the semester, and TNF has felt no different. We wrapped up our "Disciples are..." series and have transitioned into a follow up "How do Disciples Think About..." series where we will get to talk through some more practical topics like dating, body image, conflict, and keeping commitments. I am really excited for the "boots on the ground" kind of application our students will walk away with! Please be praying for our students to take this stuff seriously and continue to seek to grow as the semester draws to a close instead of coasting by spiritually until summer. I am hoping that these last six weeks would be transformative for them and that God will use this time in mighty ways.

    At the beginning of the month we had "Family Night", a special edition of TNF where students could invite their parents, siblings, friends, and anyone else they call family! It was a special time where we got to share the vision and mission of FOCUS with everyone while also giving family and friends a little taste of what their student has been involved in this year. It was a really neat evening and I was blessed to get to meet people who have been investing in these students long before they stepped foot onto Collin's campus. Here is a picture from Family Night - it was such a blessing seeing all of these families and people in so many different stages of life worshipping together!

    We also had a FOCUS-wide event hosted at UTD called "Night of Gospel Worship" where some Black students from our ministry led us in a Gospel-style service for the evening. It was really neat to experience a style of worship I don't have too much familiarity with! Here is a picture of all of the Collin students and staff who attended!

Core

    Core has been going strong! It is always such an encouragement getting to spend my Monday evenings with these dudes and to see them put God first in their lives. As we head into the last couple of weeks of the year, I can't help but thank God for the growth He has produced in these guys' lives and feel excited for what He will do in their futures. At the beginning of the month we hit what has been our peak for the year - 20 of us including Gio, my coleader, and I! The past couple of weeks we have hot on some pretty meaningful topics like prayer, loss, and lust, so please pray that these guys would continue take the Scriptures we have been going through and the time we have spent together to heart and that the Spirit would bring about good fruit in their lives. I am so proud of these students and I am excited to finish our year together out strong!

    

    Here is a picture from our core on prayer - we met up on campus so we could go on some prayer walks around Collin lifting up the students, faculty, administration, and ministries here to God. It was such a meaningful evening together!

FOJ!

    FOJ (aka Focus on Jesus) isn't a part of the ministry I tend write about too often, but getting to study the Bible 1-on-1 with guys in our core has been one of my favorite parts of my job! As a quick refresher, it is a 10 section study that highlights Scripture and prods discussion about topics like the Bible itself; faith, love, and obedience; sin; grace; and rebirth, repentance, and baptism, ultimately culminating in "Sent into the World", a section about going out and making disciples for Christ. It is these 1-on-1 relationships that I have seen God's work in students' lives the most, and by proxy have gotten to build such cool friendships along the way. Here is a picture with one of the guys in our core who I just finished FOJ with earlier this week!

Spring Break!

    With spring break this month, my core and the girls' Monday night core went camping in Oklahoma for a couple of days. We got to hike, swim, and hang out - it was a really nice break from the florescent lights and general business of Collin College. It was a huge boost in bringing our core guys closer together as friends and a whole lot of fun! Here are some pictures from the trip:

Thank you!

    As always, thank you so very much for supporting God's work at Collin this year! It is such an encouragement having you in my corner and praying for what God is doing this year - I am sure a lot of the transformation I have gotten to see and experience is God answering y'all's prayers alongside my own. What a cool privilege it is to be partners in the spreading of the Gospel, both with each other and with our Lord. To the ends of the Earth! In the New Testament class I am taking for the apprenticeship, a passage from the end of Hebrews really stuck out to me: 

"Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

- Hebrews 13:20-21

    I can't help but feel blessed to get to see that passage at work in the lives of students across Collin and in my own life, too!

    In my last update I mentioned I would be reaching out to you all to give you more information about me staying on staff with FOCUS for the next 2 years, and unfortunately March came and went a whole lot faster than I was expecting it to (my fault entirely). I am so sorry to have left you in suspense! I will definitely be reaching out in the next few weeks, so I am looking forward to talking with each of you soon!

    To close, thank you so much again for your prayers and support, and thank you for taking the time to read this update! Please continue to pray for me and pray for Collin FOCUS - that we would follow God and finish well in the sprint to the finish line of the school year. As always, a browser version of this blog email and the rest of the blog posts I have made this year are available at http://mick.mcafoose.anyfocus.org/ and attached is Caitlynn's testimony, a student at TWU! Please feel free to reach out to me if you would like more information or have any questions. I would love to get to hear from you!

Blessings,

Mick