January: Cold Camp and Creating Shalom

Hello, all! Wow, January flew by up here in Denton. Here's what's been going on! 

Our whole community at Winter Camp! What a joy to worship the Lord together!

Winter Camp

...was very cold. But oh so fun!! Every winter, all of our campuses gather together out at Sky Ranch to spend time fellowshipping and worshipping the Lord. It's such a sweet retreat full of short nights and days packed with learning, gaming, walking, and talking. This was my fourth winter camp but my first one from the perspective of a staff person. It really was so encouraging to get to meet students from all over the metroplex and hear how God has been impacting their lives!

Kelsey (left) and Devon (right) are both in my peer team's cores. I think they really got a lot out of the whole weekend experience! Not only did they get to make new friends and develop deeper friendships with people they already knew but they heard from Dr. John Stackhouse, a scholar from Canada and our speaker for the weekend. 

Dr. Stackhouse spent a lot of our sessions talking about our purpose as human beings and Christians and why we do what we do. I found his talks to be really helpful and surprisingly simple! A lot of it was just to do the things you know to do like pray, read your Bible, and love people. However, the way he communicated those things was far from boring and seemed to click with a lot of our students! 

One thing that has stuck with me is this idea of creating shalom in the world around us. He describes creating shalom as cultivating flourishing life in our relationships, in the mundane things we do, and really in any situation we find ourselves in. I think the key part for me was that creating shalom is not an exclusively Christian thing to do. This was really humanity's original purpose ~ subduing the earth in Genesis 1 ~ and our participation in this makes us more fully human and honors God. I'm still figuring out what that idea could mean but there's something about it that strikes a cord with me. 

I know y'all have been waiting breathlessly for this - I finally got a picture with all the girls in my peer team!! (Clockwise starting with me: me, Aileen, Alexcea, Jacy, Taylor)

Here's a few more pictures!

"HARDCORE PARCORE"
Taylor and Alexcea's core on a GIANT chair: Taylor and Hallie in the back with Ashley, Devon, Alexcea, and Hannah in the front.  

Jacy and Aileen's core with Kelsey and Sarah.

Our big dance party was a success - lots of stomping and clapping!

Overall, a successful weekend! Our students were encouraged and stretched and have gone back to their campuses with a new energy, ready to cultivate life by the power of the Spirit. Thank you for your prayers, the Lord has been faithful to us over and over again!

One of my goals for this semester is to read books of Scripture with my peer team. So far, that has been going really well! We've read Ephesians and Galatians so far. A few of the girls and I are picking up on this theme of walking with the Spirit and responding to His prompting as we do normal, everyday things. I'm so excited to keep reading the Bible together and watching how the Lord uses that in our lives. There's something powerful about reading Scripture out loud with a group of people who want to know God better.

Thank you for your prayers and support! Love y'all!