February

Hello, all!

Happy February! I am so so so happy that I and most of you live in Texas right now, because that means we are escaping the polar vortex currently. I literally am not even a little prepared to deal with weather like that. It's one of the blessings I have been counting lately, our fair weather. What are the small blessings you've been counting lately?

As always, we have our student testimony for the month! I actually know this girl, and met her last May at our SICM conference in Washington. I have gotten to know her story over the last six months and I'm so encouraged by her spirit of perseverance, and service to our ministry. Nicole's story is powerful. Quick note: In her testimony, she mentions that she met a girl named Shayla at TWU. I am not the Shayla she is speaking about. She referring to another girl that was involved in our ministry last year, and I'm thankful God used that girl to reach out to Nicole.


Winter Camp:

This year, we had over 600 people attend our annual Winter Camp! We had theologian John Stackhouse come down and talk about our purpose of "Maximizing Shalom" while we are here and subversively confronting the zeitgeist aka "The Spirit of the Times. Every year at Winter Camp, we have an optional 1.5 - 2 hour open Q&A for our students to attend. This year, we had over 85% of 600 people attend that! I'm not good with numbers but that is pretty impressive that our students would use their free time at camp in that way. I think that showed us how keen our students are in asking questions and really wanting to learn about Jesus and what that means to be a Christian. In fact, Dr. Stackhouse insisted on having a second Q&A to field more questions. We were very blessed to have him. If you are interested in listening to Dr. Stackhouse's lectures from camp, here is the audio:

https://anyfocus.org/resources/media-page/?category=508&key_words=Search&speaker=All&series=All
Image may contain: 22 people, including Kennedy Thornton, Opal Goforth, Michelle Kim, Ashley Lewis, Heather Gilbertson, Sammy Alameri, Cesia Martinez, Aileen Teniente, Ernesto Torres Jr and 6 others, people smiling, people standing
Our UNT group from this year
Image may contain: 11 people, including Eryka Lachcik, Aaron Hollingsworth, Erin Campbell, Justin Wiederkehr and Shayla Trotter, people smiling, people standing
Our tiny but fierce NCTC crew! That's me on the right.

Image may contain: one or more people and crowd
All FOCUS campuses! Even our new brothers and sisters from DBU!



Prayer requests:
- Please pray that God would bless our outreach efforts to our campus, and that the students who are really looking for something like this would find it.
- Please pray for restoration and rejuvenation for our staff and students as a lot of them take on a busy semester. Pray that we would be a people sustained by the Holy Spirit. 
- Please pray for deliverance from evil, freedom in being made new, and peace for our campuses. 
- Please pray that our students embrace the spirit of a learner as we have our Spring Pizza Theology coming up soon!

I am so thankful for all of you! 

In Christ,

Shayla












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