School's Starting!

We are within a week of school starting again! I'm so pumped to get back on campus and start God work on Collin College once again!

Summer was wonderful and a much needed change of pace; while still doing ministry with the people we had in town, we also spent all summer planning and preparing for NOW! Well it's here and I'm happy to say we are prepared :).

Two weekends ago we had our staff retreat, and last weekend we had our Corefa Prep Day (Corefas are our student leaders in case you forgot). For the retreat we spent two days uniting as a staff; looking back and remembering what God has done in our ministry and now ministries; and then looking ahead at what God can and wants to do in our ministries! At the Prep Day, we spent 12 hours with our Corefas, again uniting as a team and trying to build closer relationships; preparing them for their role in meeting as many people possible the first two weeks of school (the more people you meet those two weeks, the more ministry opportunity you have the rest of the year); and getting them pumped and ready for the crazy year ahead of them. I can tell you we have another great team at Collin this year!

Our theme for the year is Break Every Chain. At the Staff Retreat we sang a worship song together actually called Break Every Chain. It starts off singing over and over that "There is Power in the name of Jesus." Then is follows it up and says "to break every chain." I believe that is absolutely true. There is no chain that Jesus can't break in our lives.

Another verse says "There's an army rising up" over and over, and then ends with "to break every chain."

As 21 of us sang that song together in a small room tears came to my eyes. We are that army rising up, our Corefas are that army rising up, those in our ministry, those who will come to our ministry this year, you guys who support what we're doing and back us with prayer and money... All of us together are an army rising up, to be chain-breakers for a world who is locked down with chain after chain after chain.

Another part of the song (in the mp3 version) the main singer starts singing loudly, "I hear the chains falling!"

Well, I hear the chains falling, guys. I hope you can too. And I hope we all join together this year to make that happen.

There is power in the name of Jesus!

Here's the link to the song if you want to listen to it. I just recorded
myself singing it so you would get an idea of it. Juuust kidding, I wish.

Check out this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pD2zIuiC2g

Also say hello to the 2013-2014 FOCUS Staff:

Much love!
Brianna