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Fruit That Will Last

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Happy spring to you all!! This semester was a blur...but the good kind. It went by so fast, but it was productive, sweet, and fruitful. I apologize for not getting these updates out too frequently this semester. I really did get caught up in the swing of things. But I've got quite a few pictures and fun things to share from the semester. The picture above is all of our women ministers at Collin and our 6 girl student leaders. Every Monday night we would all meet together for dinner and talk about life, ministry, and Jesus. We kicked off the semester with our annual Winter Camp. This one was extra special though - it was our first in two years because of COVID. Every campus in the DFW with FOCUS invites students to this weekend of building relationships with God and community. The turnout was awesome - around 400 people total - and we got to see so many friendships form and deepen. Above is a picture of all of our Collin students who attended which is incredible considering only abo
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Wrapping up 2021!

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Happy Christmastime!! I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving. My parents and one of my sisters, Kelsey, came to visit us in Plano this year which was a fun change - though I certainly miss our annual Campbell family Thanksgiving feasts. The last couple months have flown by for me and I can't believe our students are in their final week of the semester! It's been so nice to be back in person with students and to get to spend more time on campus together. I'm still blown away by the growth our community at large has experienced in one short semester. Throughout the semester, we continued spending a bit of time on campus every Tuesday to meet students and invite to hangout with us. One of my favorite activities we did (thanks to our apprentice Renee) was bring super mini lego sets and invite people to come build little animals they could take home with them! I loved getting to know students while we did such a creative hands-on activity! For the last several years, Collin FOCUS
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Multiplied

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Happy fall y'all!! This semester has been flying by, but I'm trying to slow down and take in the day to day moments I get to be part of with so many sweet people. The picture above is from Fall Camp which we had at the beginning of October. We had around 70 students show up and that's a pretty big deal to us. You might think that's unimpressive or numbers don't mean anything ~ and don't get me wrong, if only 5 students came to camp we would've been over the moon excited and that would've been successful to us. But being at a junior college means our ministry has very high turnover. Students join for a year, maybe lead for a year, but typically transfer after 1 or 2 years. COVID, for many obvious reasons, plus our turnover rate, really meant we were dwindling coming into this school year. In August, our leader team (picture above) consisted of our team of 10 campus pastors and 13 students. We had a handful of returning students that didn't join our le
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Back to the Beginning!

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Our view at Camp Eagle! Did anyone else wake up last week and think "how in the world are we already in September ?" ??? I've probably said that about twice a day for the last ten days now. The last two months have flown by but we've been busy getting into the new school year! At the very beginning of August, our FOCUS team took on nineteen apprentices which takes up about a third of our entire total now. In the picture above (it's hard to see them lol), they are making commitments to the students in our community. I'm so thankful for such a bright group of people who want to give 10 months of their lives to learn about campus ministry and serve college students! This is our pastoral team at our retreat during a worship session! Before kicking off the semester, our entire FOCUS team of pastors headed out to Bridgeport, Texas for a short retreat to connect with the Lord and each other to prepare for the year ahead. Our director, Brandon, led us in a few activit
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Friends, Family, and Rest

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    How are we already halfway through summer?? June went by very quickly between fundraising, summer fellowship nights, and a couple trips. But between all of those things it's been restful. At the start of the month, Adriana and I took some of the student leaders we spent all year with to Galveston for the weekend. Her parents very generously let us stay with them AND made us delicious food so that we didn't have to eat out the entire time. Our time together was sweet, purposeful, and super restful. Each one of these girls is easy to spend time with and had a great attitude no matter how long we sat in traffic, how hot it was while we waited in line for things, and when our plans changed last minute. From left to right in the picture above: Adriana, Hannah, me, Bailey, Bella, and Adriana. We wanted to take this trip with them because it was really hard to have regular random life things with them. Normally, Adriana and I would invite students over for movies or coffee, we mig
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The Sweetness of Summertime

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This is from our Summer FOCUS kick off at the end of May! Happy Summer my friends!! I can't believe the school year is officially over and summer is in full swing. Our students ended very early in May, so we finished out the month with some staff development and summer prep. For two full days, Paul Austin who is the pioneering director for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries came to lead our entire FOCUS staff team in a pioneer camp because we are hoping to pioneer some new campuses next year. Not only will we be starting new campuses, but our Collin campuses will practically be starting from scratch due to the slow year we just had. We do have a few students who will help us out, but we've got some bricks to lay! Because the majority, if not all, of our entire team is fully vaccinated now, we were able to have a full team lunch together to reflect on the year! It was so special and sweet to look back on how we ended the last school year on Zoom, but now we can literally feel a new sea
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Finishing Well

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What a year we've had! As more and more people I know are getting vaccinated, we're slowly getting more and more snippets of normalcy. Nothing too crazy has happened in the last couple of months, but our students relationships with one another have grown deeper and richer as they've gotten to interact more and live life together in ways they weren't able to for the majority of the year. It's a joy to see bonds strengthen and reflect on how the Lord has worked in each of their lives as well as my own this last year. Our students are in their finals week and we are gearing up for a change of pace this summer. It's a good time to fundraise, build relationships, and rest. I'm sooo looking forward to the summer but I'm trying to embrace the idea of finishing well. Here are some snapshots from the last month and a half: I had the privilege to lead small groups with each of these girls in the Fall then we combined them in the Spring. The girls in my peer team L
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