Friday, December 4, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving and (almost) Goodbye to 2015!

My friends, my family, my brothers and sisters. I hope that your November was full of family, quality-rest, encouragement, and reminders of our God's faithfulness. It is crazy to think that 2015 is almost over - as I look through my previous blog entries I am overwhelmed with how faithful and omniscient our God is. He really is all-knowing and is always aware of what we need despite our (at times) selfishness and seeking only our wants.

Please be praying for our students as we move into our Christmas break. We encourage our students go back home with renewed minds and hearts. Many of our students will be travelling back home and may be tempted to fall back into old habits of laziness, selfishness, and boredom. We encourage our students to have positive attitudes, seek to serve their families, and use this Christmas break to spend time seeking the Lord and preparing for the spring 2016 semester. It's extremely important to spend these breaks productive - oftentimes when our students spend the break purposefully their families begin to see the powerful life-changes that the gospel produces!

I meet weekly with Stephen & Kufre (two of our small group leaders this year) and last Wednesday we ran into Jared, a FOCUS small group leader from 2004! His daughter Kailey (far right) was there and we took a photo together symbolizing the different generations of FOCUS student leadership!

I had the pleasure to shoot and edit our "Keep FOCUS Growing - It's Worth It" videos. See link: www.anyfocus.org/itsworthit for more information. These videos were shared on Facebook/Twitter in hopes of raising $45,000 to fund our ministries monthly expenses.

We had an outreach event at Richland College on Tuesday & Wednesday the week before break. We met many students and are praying that those interactions would blossom into a 1 on 1 bible study and a great spiritual friendship. Richland College is a very deep-thinking campus and the students are consistently desiring deep spiritual conversations - pray that Christ would be their focus and goal. 

I had the privilege to go to Rome, GA for Campus Renewal's campus ministry training conference. I got to meet many college ministers from all over the nation. To my right is my friend, Jung-Woo. We went to high school together and graduated from Plano East High School in 2006. It wasn't until last year that the Lord crossed our paths on campus at UTD and now he is a campus pastor with another organization! It was so encouraging to see him and get to hear what the Lord is doing through his life. 

John Cheng, one of the campus pastors with CRU in Dallas/UTD, and I with his daughter, Hope. Hope was in the ICU with a bacterial meningitis infection and has been in recovery. Please be praying for this precious family and for their daughter, Hope. That she would be fully healed and that they would have a wonderful holiday together. They have been such an encouragement to me and everyone else at UT Dallas that they cross paths with. 

Over 50 college campus pastors gathered to fellowship and learn how we can effectively serve and challenge our students. It was such a blessing to be a part of this 3-day conference. Campus ministry can be challenging and stretching at times. It was encouraging to be able to see what all God is doing across the nation through hundreds of other campus ministries and that definitely inspired me to not grow weary!

I am so thankful for your support and friendship throughout this campus-missions process. You all are building God's kingdom NOW on his campus through your support. Your prayers and monthly donations have helped plant a campus ministry at UT Arlington and have paved the way for three 1 on 1 bible studies I am involved in at Richland - please be praying that these relationships would inspired generations of students to follow Jesus and give up all they have for the gospel.

As we enter the Christmas holiday season I want to encourage you with this scripture from Isaiah:

"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost." Isaiah 55:1

Let's approach God this holiday season and seek to glorify him through our obedience and sacrificial lives. 

I think you for your partnership - let's have a great break and spring semester!

Your missionary,

Sirak