Jan 08 2012
Important meeting tomorrow, big semester!
Happy New Year everyone! We had a great holiday. We got much needed rest and family time. We appreciate your prayers and many of you helped out with our year end shortfall. Thank you so much! It really helped.
Big week coming up. We have a big meeting with our Texas staff – planning our Tejas spring break retreat. This is an important meeting because many of us will be very busy right before the retreat and so much of the planning has to be done early. This is the retreat where God often leads many to start the journey with Himself and many discover God through the Bible and learn how to help other discovery God through the Bible. We are anticipating a very busy semester coming up. We will need your prayers as Roy will be traveling a lot to train people in ministry stuff and doing other things. We have busy regular schedules too with Friday night groups, PTO discipleship groups, lots of sports, scouts, etc. Here are some recent pictures including some from the holidays, etc. http://www.flickr.com/photos/yabukibreeze/.
Some Quick hits form the last few weeks:
- Roy and Charis got sick during the holiday. This is a blessings because it forced Roy to rest a lot which he needed. We got really close.
- Roy just finished yesterday the next major version of the PTO discipleship curriculum for our offering the ISI M28 initiative that he has been working on the last month. It is curriculum designed to help disciple groups to disciple other groups.
- The kids are excited about all the special gifts they received for Christmas. So are their parents.
- We met with our UTA ISI Team at the Phillips for a fun get together. Wow! I can’t believe how big and tight our team has become. Good job Ron as our UTA team leader.
- A fair number of students were exposed for the first time to the story of Christmas at churches during the holiday. Two student were even involved in Christmas plays at churches.
Pray for
So many wonderful things to report. This last week we were able to be a witness to a baptism of a student who is a part of several of the UTA ISM ministries. It is a wonderful testimony of God’ working through many to reach those He has chosen. We are also in full swing with several things that you all and we have been praying for. Here are a few tidbits from the last couple of weeks. I think this may be a little long, but God is doing lots and lots of stuff right now and I wanted to share them with you. Please pray!!! Once again Lisa and I and some of our team are sensing some level of Spiritual Warfare and I think it is because God is breaking new ground in places that are strongholds of the enemy.
Friday nights – As we continue this experiment with Friday Night ISI at UTA meetings at two locations (early & late groups), God continues to bless. This last week is a example of how God is working. The late group had a student who just got baptized this last week. In the early group, our volunteer Cal had some significant conversation with several students which led to him meeting with a South Asian person of peace and starting to set up relationship with a couple of other students. Roy also had a couple of significant discussions about Jesus with the result being one East Asian couple taking the discovery Bible study “cheat sheet” with the intention of doing a family discovery Bible study group in their apartment. Praise God also for workers for the Harvest. Keep on praying for more. The fields are VERY white for harvest who want to be loved on and who want to learn more about the God of Creation and His Son.
PTO (Passing Truths On)- Three PTO groups have started. PTO groups are a 16 week mode of discipling students where they are trained to 1) become disciples who train disciples, 2) learn the essentials of how to walk with Jesus, and 3) learn how to start and lead discovery Bible groups. One of these groups is being led by a couple of American volunteer girls who are learning the process themselves and are passing it along immediately to another students. Ron is training one other key volunteer on how to lead PTO groups. Roy is leading an on-campus PTO group with three students and also two volunteers who are learning how to lead these groups. Roy is also doing one PTO group using video Skype to disciples a student in Colombia and another one in Mexico. This process of starting these groups helped us too to tease out who the followers of Jesus are, those who the seekers are and whose not interested in Spiritual things but have a deep relationship with us.
Right Now Conference – Roy and staff members, Jeff, Hannah, Judy and key volunteer, Tom joined in a conference to learn how to minister together with churches from the 20-30′s demographic. Tom and Judy also were involved with a conference with business leaders on helping believers see “Work as Worship” – using the workplace as a place of ministry. We need to help our students to have this perspective. We also were able to network with business leaders in the area to kick off a new ministry that we are looking at related to students in internships.
Lisa is enjoying her new job because she is actually encouraged to share her faith with her students. It does require more outside time with students and it has less regular hours than her previous job.
Ti* is getting more and more involved with Boy Scouts and playing the cello. He is getting better at both. In scouts, he has had the opportunity to learn things such as orienteering and tying knots. Cha* is really growing into a sweet young lady who loves to do crafts, cook, and spend time with her friends. She even made her own dalmatian Halloween costume. Jonathan is navigating through his sophomore year of high school and is learning how to be more responsible with managing his home work etc.
At TCU, the team continues to flourish with several students growing through the Bible study there. Sharon, Sarah, Tim, the Moores and the rest of the team are ably leading the team. Recently, 8 UTA ISI students joined with 8 TCU ISI students in helping out with the Fall Festival as volunteers at Christ Church Assembly of God in Fort Worth. The student’s eyes were open wide as they were part of 300 volunteers who served 6000 kids and family members. They were touched by how a church would do such a thing through volunteers and donations without government help or anything. They asked many questions including “Why?”
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind for me, our team and our family. At TCU we had family weekend where parents of freshmen come on out to visit. We had a special tailgate party for the international students who did not have parents come all the way out. The following week, I had to travel to Colorado Springs for a meeting to discuss new ways of doing ministry to international students with our national leadership. Some of our team learned about how to reach Muslims from former Muslims who chose to follow Christ. Finally several major initiatives that I am intimately connected to are gearing up all at once. I honestly am getting tired of answering the question, “How is it going?” with, “It’s really been as busy as its ever been…” Still its is fun to be in the middle of some stuff that God is doing where He is pulling much of the weight.
Pray also for clarity in Tim’s scout pack that Lisa and Roy are in leadership with. We are struggling at the pack level though our den is going strong. Pray for a fishing trip we are taking the boys on this Saturday.
) that he is just learning about.
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