Spring Update!

When in Texas, Spring doesn't just "sprung"....it's more like pre-summer or pretty much what is summer to many others. Despite the rather sudden heat and humidity, campus and our students both have been buzzing with energy! In the picture above, a few students and staff are tossing a volleyball around before Thursday Night Fellowship since it's finally nice enough to hang out outside beforehand. Our students LOVE volleyball and pickle ball right now, so our team has been attempting to learn a few skills ourselves....

A few weeks ago, students from Bellevue College up in Bellevue, Washington, came to Collin College for their Spring Break to do outreach all week on campus here. It blows me away that 12 students would give up their break to come serve our campus. It was so special to have them here and get to know them. Many of them are international students from Congo - so added to the layer of getting out of their comfort zones was the fact that English is their second language after French. We coordinated the whole week for them, but they barely needed direction. Every day they showed up to campus eager and confident to go meet students, invite them to our daily activity, and share how Jesus has impacted their lives. One of our events was a table that had "shoe cleaning." I was a bit skeptical at the idea, not gonna lie, and figured no one would want to come have their shoes cleaned by a magic eraser by some people standing around wearing t-shirts with a Christian organization logo. Oh was I humbled quickly by that assumption - people were intrigued, curious, engaged, and pretty excited to have their shoes cleaned! It was neat to see people respond to something strange and peculiar just as Jesus often did in his stories - he strayed from the norm, unconcerned with what people expected of him and concerned with conveying to people he was here to serve and love.

At the end of the week, we hosted a "Texas Hoedown" to give the students a taste of Texas! We taught them line dances and bought them paper cowboy hats they could take home with them. Considering most of us aren't really country folk ourselves, we too learned the dances along with them and had a blast doing it. Towards the end of the night, one of the students from Washington taught us a line dance he had learned back home in Ghana! I wish I had all the videos in the world to show you how much fun it was for them and our own students. It was special to catch yet another glimpse of what was meant by people of every tribe, nation, and tongue. 

It's hard to believe we are already prepping to close out the semester - students have finals next week so our end of year party is in two days!! We're currently experiencing all of our "lasts" for the year - like last night we had our last peer team meeting. To start, we all shared what we thought God might have been teaching us this year through leading. A few common themes were 1. that we need help and that's okay and 2. that we need to surrender our own expectations. I'm so proud of each and every one of them for giving up a few hours every week to serve and lead their peers. After that we (you guessed it) played some volleyball. It's been rainy so they played in a muddy puddle (I stood to the side and pretended to be useful) but we laughed a lot and had a great time together.

Our staff teams summer doesn't officially begin until June 1, so my plan for the rest of this month is to get fully fundraised for next year so I can spend the summer resting, following Luna around as she begins to wiggle and squirm and crawl (how in the world), connect with the other women on our team, and get to know our student leaders for next year. I still have about $1,000 per month to raise - mostly for childcare costs for next year. If you know of anyone at all that might be interested, please send them my way!

Thank you for tuning in this month and for your ongoing support! I genuinely mean this every time I say it, but it means the world to me. I certainly couldn't do this without this team of ministry partners.

Here's a picture of sweet little Lunie this month because you also support her in all of this. It no doubt takes a village to raise this little nugget and we appreciate the way you take part in it.

Prayer Requests:

• For our students as they wrap up school and head into summer - that they would rest and remain connected to Jesus and community
• For our pastors and students going to the Student Institute of Campus Ministry next week to train to disciple their peers on campus
• For myself and our entire team as we hit the ground hard in fundraising

With love,

Jacy