Give Thanks to the Lord for He is Good; His loves endures forever (December 2021)

 

    Hey there! I hope you've had a great month! 

    Here's a look into what I've been up to and all the exciting things going on in our Focus community at Richland.

    But before that I just want to say thank you so much for investing in the lives of college students and partnering with me in ministry this year! You are such a blessing to me as I literally couldn't be on campus without you backing me. I'm very grateful for you and for your investment into our little community. Thank you!

Also, as of this week, School is officially out until Spring semester! For the next few weeks I'll be able to fill my time with more casual hangouts with students, sending Christmas cards, and taking some vacation time.

    Here's what I've been up to!

    

    This was taken at one of our weekly campus connect times where we hosted volleyball on campus (everyone really loves when we bring the volleyball net; it's definitely a fan favorite). Even late in the semester we're trying to meet people and invite them into community. The beginning of every new semester is crunch time when it comes to outreach, so please be praying that we would meet a lot of students when we go back onto campus for the spring semester.

    Over thanksgiving week we had our students do this daily guided prayer activity in order to help them learn how to pray and build the discipline of prayer into their lives. If you would pray that they would continue to develop in prayer and grow in relationship with God that would mean a lot to me! Also feel free to do this prayer activity for yourself - it's pretty neat!

   So this is Manuel, one of the students that I've gotten a lot of time with this semester.  Manuel was born and raised in Colombia and when I met him in the first week of school he told me he was an atheist, but since that time I've got to watch him really wrestle with his view of God and ask a lot of big questions. He's been really encouraging to me this year! I wanted to share this thank you note he gave me - it means a lot to me and I hope it's encouraging to you too!

    Here are some pics from a hangout after our weekly fellowship night. I love that our ministry has so much fun together! The last one is of me and Yoni. He's new to our ministry this year, but I've been really impressed with his heart for serving others. I get to meet with him consistently and he's another encouraging guy that has been growing a lot in his relationship with God. Please be praying for all these students over the break!

My one prayer request is that God would help me to lead our students by the example of Jesus.

Thank you for praying for me, for reading my newsletter, and for being on my support team.

Much love, 

Joey Thurston