Photo: (Top) Jeremiah (a BSM student leader and the guy who lives with us!) engages a student in spiritual conversation during our weekly chai outreach booth in the business school; (Left Bottom) Brittany (a BSM student leader) teaches others about sharing the gospel via the Three Circles Method during our Engage 24 Evangelism emphasis night; (Right bottom) After our Engage 24 Evangelism training, we took a group of students to host a hot chocolate and game outreach in one of the freshmen dorms so they could immediately put into practice the gospel sharing they had learned.
October was our annual evangelism emphasis month. Though we strive to have sharing the gospel be a daily effort and the constant culture in the BSM, it helps to have some specific days to train students and to jump start them into a life of gospel sharing. To do that, we participated in Engage 24, a national collegiate ministry effort to help students engage in evangelism learning and practice for at least 24 hours. At one of our weekly worship gatherings, some of our student leaders shared stories about engaging others in the gospel and then held trainings in relational evangelism, the Three Circles gospel sharing method and Soularium Card outreach efforts. It was neat to see once gospel-shy students begin engaging in the process of sharing their faith!
Also in October, midterm exams hit and we saw and uptick in students wrestling with anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. Though this is now the norm on college campuses across the U.S., it is especially true at UTD, as the students are highly driven and put serious pressure on themselves to succeed academically. We see this even in our BSM student leadership team as well. But praise God for amazing Christian counselors who are working beside us to care for these students. We now have about a third of our leadership team attending Christian counseling in addition to participating in personal discipleship meetings with staff. We are so proud of these students for taking the initiative and making the effort to grow in all areas of their lives!
The mental health struggles will continue to rise on campus as we get closer and closer to final exams. Would you pray with us about the following?
- Pray that the Lord would intersect the path of students struggling with anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts with a believer on campus who could love them, share gospel truth with them and walk with them to take healthy steps towards help and healing.
- Pray for our leadership students who are walking through counseling. Pray that through this, they will see the Lord's truth about them and will find healing in Him.
- Pray for wisdom for us BSM staff as we walk with students having mental health struggles.
Thank you for ministering with us through prayer and your support! It means the world to us to know we are not laboring for the gospel at UTD alone.
We love y'all and are praying for you too!
- Mark and Kaitlin