March Ministry Update

Hello friends and supporters!

I'm excited to share about everything that has been going on in Focus over the past month. It amazes me how God works through inexperienced, weak, and sinful people like us to accomplish his good will, and how he somehow manages to pour out blessing after blessing on us along the way. God is good.

I'll start this update by talking about something that's been really exciting to me. We have partnered with another Christian group on campus to focus on beginning friendships with people from the Middle East. We were approached by this group because they saw how there wasn't much purposeful contact between American Christians and Middle Eastern students. So we began to meet in a small room on campus Friday mornings from 10:30 to noon. We call this Turkish Coffee Time. It is a time to meet students from the Middle East, eat and drink their customary coffee and snacks, and have conversations about life, culture, religion, and other things. We have met twice so far and it's been really cool to see our students coming and meeting people. We plan to do this every week and establish this as a way to continually reach out to this student group.

Our times of worship this semester have been really meaningful. We have 12...yes, 12 different people leading our worship this semester. We've moved away from the paradigm that the worship leader needs to be a male singer with a guitar, and decided that we want to develop worship leaders no matter what their musical gifting. So we gave each student a week to lead our community in worship. After they think through some ideas about what to do they get with Cody, our intern, and the two of them finalize the worship plan. The result has been deep, engaging, and meaningful worship led by young students who are seeing, some for the first time, the endless possibilities in worshipping our God. We've had prayer nights, times to write out our thoughts to God in praise, different people share about why songs are important to them, and more.

To finish up, this month has not been one marked merely by good tidings and easy sailing. We have encountered resistance from the enemy on multiple fronts. People getting gravely sick, spiritual attacks, deception, and a host of other issues have made this month a difficult one. I ask that you please be in prayer over these things. Pray for the Ephesians 6 kind of strength that we need to overcome these things. Remember us, who are working on the campus on behalf of Christ, and pray for our endurance. We need your help here more than anywhere. We are confident of the Lord's hand in these things, and trust he will continue to lead us now, as he always has. Thank you so much for your partnership and support. We are so grateful to have allies such as you in this battle!

Yours in Christ,

Garrett