It's Fall Y'all!

Things have been going by so quickly, I didn't even notice we were in October! I'm way overdue for an update here. Not too much went on last month which is refreshing considering this season can be pretty hectic any other year. I'm enjoying the chance to continue to slow down and be present in all of my interactions with people.

The picture above is my Thursday core (small group). It's in Frisco for Preston Ridge students and I lead it with Bailey (on the left). So far, only one girl, Amanda (on the right), has come every single week. We've been meeting and inviting people on campus, but it's been hard to get traction. I'm really proud of their attitudes about it - instead of being discouraged by the smallness of it, we've embraced the opportunity to have even deeper friendships. When we meet for core, we meet for about 3 hours because we all have the flexibility for that in our schedules. We listen to the sermon, have discussion, then sometimes we'll read together or we'll just hang out - last week we did cartwheels around the park we meet at! Amanda wants to open a cafe after college so she regularly brings us sweet treats to try out like this blueberry lemon cheesecake in a cup! I have another core on Friday which I'll try to remember to take a picture of them this week to feature next month.

This is my coworker, Erin, who I've been friends with for a long time. It's exciting to be on the same team now! We've been brainstorming ways to meet new people on campus, so one day we went together to make signs to invite people to hang out. Something else we get to do together is meet with all the other women on our team along with our supervisor, Garrett. We call it girls club (with Garrett). That time has been not only sweet as we've all built on our friendships there, but it's been enriching too as we usually have a question of the week we think and discuss through over dinner. Some things we've talked about this last month were comparison, how we're doing, and how we grow. I always look forward to our time together.

Something we did at the end of September was our fall Pizza Theology. I didn't get any pictures because it was a live stream through twitch. Typically, we have every campus come together for 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon to engage with theology at a collegiate level and we eat pizza in the middle. We aren't able to do that now, so our team coordinated a livestream pizza theology called "In It Not of It" referring to living in the world but not being of the world. We talked a lot about how we as Christians can think and engage in current events - such as different movements or politics. Our goal was not to tell them what specifically to think, but to consider different angles and critically thinking through decisions we make and things we say. It was very thought-provoking and convicting for people from all different backgrounds.

Thank you for tuning into my latest updates! I'm already eager to share about October with you - we've got a few exciting things planned coming up!

Prayer Requests:

• October has historically been a pretty draining month for students. So far that hasn't been the case! Pray that our students would look to the Lord in all circumstances.
• Pray for our students to deepen relationships with one another and capture a vision for the mission.
• Pray for our team to continue to discern how we can best serve our students this year.

Praying for you all! Thank you for your ongoing partnership with me. I'd love to hear all about how you're season is going! Please always feel free to email, text, or call me.

With love,

Jacy