My friends! My team!
Here we are - it's September! At this point we are moving full steam ahead into an amazing year @ Richland College! Even though our campus is 100% online this fall, we are thinking through creative and innovative ways to serve & love our students :)
This is probably the most amount of pictures that I have ever posted on a blog! I hope you enjoy :)
This year is going to be different for sure - not just for me as a campus pastor - but for everyone. Last week during our Thursday Night Thunder I asked our students: "How many of you feel that you have fully adjusted to this pandemic?" Only about 1 or 2 out of 25 students raised their hands. The majority of our students still feel disoriented and not-adjusted to this pandemic - and that is just where we're at. My gut tells me that they are not alone in how they feel.
Our theme this year is, "A Voice In The Wilderness", and our students 100% feel like they are in a wilderness. In fact, I've accepted that we cannot change the 'wilderness' that we're in. We can't change the surroundings we are in but we can adjust our heart & perspective. We can continue to draw our students close together as we engage with each other and seek where God is working and join him.
My prayer for this year is that we, as a community would be present to each other and what God is trying to teach us about ourselves and his will for us. My fear is that we would just dig our heads into the sand and 'wait this thing out'. As far as I'm concerned - God's plan has not changed! He still is raising up a generation to raise their heads and be a voice in the wilderness :)
I know that we aren't the only ones who feel disoriented throughout this season. I hope the photos below encourage you and remind of you of what your support and partnership is going toward.
Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have anything in your life that you need prayer for!
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| Our first Richland Thursday Night in-person socially-distanced meeting! It was a good reminder to see how God has been working in the lives of our students. |
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| We had our first men's core of the year! We did an in-person option in addition to a zoom option for our students who were joining over the internet. Our 1st core was awesome! |
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| From left to right (Bryan, Dayo (my co-leader), and Ricky) our guys that showed up to the 1st core of the year! |
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| Our 1st in-person meeting of the year! We met at Huffhines park and had games, drinks & snacks for all of our students who stopped by! |
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| We did our first combined leader day w/ the SMU & TWU-Dallas leader teams and it was awesome! We're all smiling underneath those masks, I promise! |
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| Sayuri & Tom were facing against each other in the final round of our rock-paper-scissors tournament! It was a fun way to get our students excited and engaged after a long day of leadership training. |
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| Another shot of our SMU/TWU-Dallas/Richland student leader teams preparing for the school year. It was so fun to get time with them and prepare for the year together! |
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