Sirak's December/January Update! (Lots of pictures!)

 My friends & team! 

The year is off to a great start and I'm honored to tell you all about it. Our student leaders have been hard at work loving & serving our campus and it's been so encouraging to see life changes happen in real-time!

In December we had our end-of-the-year Christmas party and rested up in preparation for our Annual Winter Retreat. Winter Retreat is one of my favorite events that we do each year because it gives the students a vision for what their time in college can look like if they begin to surrender their plans & desires to Jesus. 

I do believe that going to college is a good thing. However, many students have a small vision of what their education can be used for. Instead of getting a degree to "make more money" or "create a comfortable life" - we begin asking: What if God has placed you here in college to be a blessing to others? After all, globally, less than 1% of the world even gets the opportunity to go to college. 

Winter Retreat creates a type of synergy that invites students into a space of considering what their time in college can look like as they begin re-forming their opinions & ideas surrounding what college is and how this time can be used to love and impact others and not just receive information to get a degree and make more money. 

After all, gaining information is important - but, in the Kingdom of God - we are all IN-formation. We are actively being formed as we seek the heart of God. And where do we do that? Right where we are. 

It is a privilege to get to love these college students and invite them to receive & respond to the message of Jesus. To seek the Lord and let him form you! 

Our Richland FOCUS group! Thank you so much for your support & partnership. Each one of these students has been impacted by your love & generosity! 

All 14 of our FOCUS campuses! Winter Retreat was a huge success :) 

Sandra & Carlos! 

Our Richland Students getting ready to leave for Winter Retreat! 

During worship on one of the nights our students locked arms and sang with one another. It was a special moment that I loved they got to share with one another.

I'm sure many of you know by now - but we are so excited to be expecting! The due date is July 29th so everything is definitely happening fast!  

Our worship team(s) did a great job leading us at Winter Retreat! 

It's been a while since I got to help with electric guitar at winter retreat, so it was fun to get to be up there serving our ministry on the band.

Thank you so much for your support and believing in our mission to love college students! We are grateful and honored that we get to walk alongside you all on campus as God brings the right students in our path to love & invite to receive & respond to the message of the Gospel.

My wife & I do have a prayer request: 

• Over the last two years we have been in the market looking for a house and, in many ways, it has been stressful and has stretched us to have faith and trust that the right housing situation will open up when the time is right. 
• Would you pray for us that as we enter the spring season that God would open the right doors for us to find a home that is affordable and can be a natural extension of our ministry? A home that we can welcome college students into and that we can raise our family in? 
• God is faithful! We just wanted to invite you all to join us in prayer :) 

Thank you all for believing in us!

Your brother & campus missionary,

Sirak 

 

Sirak's November & December Update!

My friends & team!

We're almost at the end of a WONDERFUL fall semester. God has been so good providing our Richland FOCUS ministry with a group of students that are engaging and continually open to one another and what God is doing on our campus :)

Every one of our students is so unique and they each have played a unique role to make our ministry what it is. This fall semester I began to realize that God has been actively at work not just in the lives of our students, but in the local community we are strategically placed as well. 

As of right now, FOCUS is one of two campus ministries on Richland College. There are over 15,000 students who are enrolled in classes and we feel so privileged to get to be in touch with the students who are on campus with us. 

Please pray for us as we prepare for the spring semester. Pray that God would continue to open up doors for new spiritual friendships & connections with the campus! 

We feel extremely grateful since our relationship this year with the Office of Student Life is the strongest that it has ever been! Dallas College has hired a fun, upbeat, and warm-hearted group of staff that we get to serve the campus with. Yes!!!

Me & the Richland FOCUS fellas at our end-of-the-semester party! 

Our Wednesday Noon Men's Core - it has been such a great experience to get to learn & grow with these students.

Grateful for our Thursday Night Fellowship Meeting times!

Joey sharing with us at our end-of-the-semester party! 

For our last core of the semester, me & the guys went to get Ethiopian food! I've loved leading with Yoni (far right) this semester and I am grateful we get to share in our Ethiopian culture with each other! 

Joey planned & coordinated a Thanksgiving potluck with our students! It was a blast to get to eat and share the great things God has been doing this semester within our ministry. 

We are grateful for Tom and his heart! He loves our students so much and we are always honored when he gets to share on Thursday nights!

We had our Fall Pizza Theology in November and it was a blast :) We talked a

bout the book of Revelation - our students were attentive and engaged with what our speakers had to share!

Grateful for our Thursday night gatherings - it has been a great place to connect with other students and remember God's faithfulness from week to week!

Our 2022-23 FOCUS Staff! 

Thank you so much for your support and continued partnership. I'm honored to have each and every one of you on my support team. I'm excited to see what the spring semester brings. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you need prayer for anything in your life.

Have a Merry Christmas! 

Your brother & campus missionary,

Sirak 

 

Sirak's October Update! (We Have Momentum!)

My friends & team!

It's been an AMAZING September & October - God has been truly building momentum among our students & student leaders. I can confidently say that it feels like we are at 100% full capacity from COVID!

This year I am studying the Bible 1-on-1 with a student named Nick. He is 22 years old and has been consistently attending Richland Campus FOCUS Thursday Night Fellowship and Core. He has been a huge blessing to my life through his consistency and eagerness to learn & engage with Gods' word (see photo below). 

Typically at a community college, we have 2 years or less to get students plugged into our community in order for them to build spiritual friendships and cultivate a space for them to grow in their relationship with Jesus. Over the last few years we have sensed a type of trepidation and angst among incoming students to be bold and let themselves be known by other students around them. This year we have probably seen the most open & warm-hearted group of students enter our ministry. 

I hope the photos below encourage you and show what your support has been going towards! There are a lot of cool things going on and I want y'all to know all about it! Even this last Thursday night we had an after-event where we encouraged our students to go out, grab some food, and come back so we can all watch "Coco" the film together. The majority of them came back and we had a great time!

This year our worship team has consisted of me & Kris (right). She has been doing an amazing job playing Cajon and making our Thursday night fellowship times encouraging.

Our 2022 Richland Fall Camp group! We had such an amazing group of students this year come & join us! 

Our Wednesday Noon Men's Core - they have all been so consistent and engaged with one another every week! 

Joey giving instructions to our students for a cool worship activity :) 

I

This year I get to lead core w/ Yoni (above). Here he is sharing his student-testimony at Fall Camp! He did a great job being vulnerable and sharing how God has impacted & shaped his life.

Our Thursday Night FOCUS gatherings have been a great time of sharing in one another's lives. These students are definitely busy and it means so much to our staff that they would make it a priority every week to show up! 

Here's a pic I took at our annual FOCUS Worship Class! We all get together to have a fun class on talking about the "Why & the What" of Worship with one another. What a great gift to get to lead this class!

Last night Joey did a great job preaching on "Come & See: God's Heart for Growth" :) Grateful to have him on our team! 

Thank you all so much for your support & for believing in our mission! October was a powerful month of seeing God's faithfulness in action and beyond that, I get to see God's faithfulness through YOU all. 

THANK YOU - for your encouragements & love! I'm honored to get to walk alongside you on campus as we get to be vessels for God's love! 

Your brother & campus missionary,

Sirak  

...And We're Off! (Sirak's August Missions Update)

The year has begun! 

My friends & team! I hope that your August wasn't too hot and that you are ready for a beautiful fall season. The year is off to a great start and I'm excited to get to share with you what God has been doing at Dallas College Richland Campus. 

Welcome week was a great experience as we got to connect with a new incoming class of students at Richland College. We've typically set up a volleyball net outside of the main cafeteria, but we have noticed that over the last few years fewer and fewer students were interested in coming outside in the heat to play volleyball (I guess most people want to stay indoors and be on their phones, hah). 

The campus let us set up two different tables on campus to maximize the number of people we would connect with. It was a great experience! Joey (one of our senior staff) coordinated with Starbucks to help us get free coffee every day and we were able to connect with a new students throughout the week! 

Our first week of core was also a great success! The students are excited and motivated to get to know one another and pursue what following Jesus could look like while students. We have momentum and synergy among our students that I have not seen since pre-COVID. Please pray that we would be faithful in loving & serving the students among us! 

Thank you for your support & for believing in our mission to love college students! I hope that the pictures below encourage you and fill you with love. Your support means something! There are students who are being impacted and are being introduced to the Jesus-way of living! So good! 

Pictures Below: 

For one of our welcome week events, we did a Braums night off campus to meet some of the students that have been coming around! It was fun! 

A group photo after our first Thursday Night Thunder meeting! It was awesome to get to be with everyone on Thursday Night - we have a lot of fun personalities in our group this year! 

We did an Arcade-night and afterwards we got pizza together! 

I had the privilege to speak at our first Thursday Night FOCUS of the year. Our theme this year is "Come & See". In our sermon series, we are inviting the students to Come & See the many aspects of who God is; I can tell that our sermon series is really resonating with the students! 

My core this year! I get to lead w/ Yoni (student in the black/white striped shirt) and he has been an absolute blessing to my life. I love getting to work with him and serving alongside him. Please be praying for him, he got in a car accident about a week ago and is currently working with his insurance company to handle all of the details. 

Here is me - as a young lad w/ my sister, Meron. We are walking along a riverwalk in Windsor, Ontario. 

We did an Super-Smash-Brothers event on campus during welcome week - it was awesome! We had a bunch of new students come and hang out with us! 

The campus has been more open in letting us advertise around campus with fewer restrictions. Hopefully we are able to connect with more & more students that way! 

Claire w/ our FOCUS table at Welcome Week! 

Thank You! So much for believing in me and walking with me along this campus missionary journey :) 

I'm looking forward to an awesome year! Let's do this!

Sirak