Our New Team and Lots and Lots of Airport Pick Ups!

Photos: (Top) Meet our 2018-19 UTD Ministry Team - Jourdan, Brady, Mark, Kaitlin and Grace.
(Bottom pics) Since July 21, we in the BSM have helped coordinate more than 600 airport pick ups for new international students arriving at UTD... that's a lot of students and thousands of suitcases!


July has been filled with support raising, visiting family, a few days of vacation in New Mexico (Yay for cooler weather!) and many airport pick ups for new international students. We are excited to share that Jourdan and Brady are fully funded and I am now funded at 91 percent! Grace is at 60 percent for this next year and we are praying that additional funding comes in soon. We are so thankful for the provision God has given through you and many others so that we can continue sharing the gospel at UT Dallas and Collin College and teaching students how to do the same.

Again this summer, God has given us amazing open doors with the UTD International Office and with the Indian Student Association, groups we are working with to help coordinate the airport pick ups. Since early July, we have trained 150 volunteers from local churches, and these volunteers have helped with more than 600 pick ups to date. We expect to help with a couple hundred more before classes start on Aug. 20. Many volunteers are doing a fabulous job with following up days after, taking students to the grocery store, helping them open bank accounts and assisting with other needs they have with settling in. These actions lay the foundation for deep relationships to be formed throughout the school year, ones where the gospel can easily be shared.

Would you pray for these students and volunteers and that the love of Christ would abound in these connections?

Thanks for helping make these airport pick ups and welcome ministry possible!

Prayer Requests

- Student Leadership and Training - Our student leaders arrive back on campus a week from today (Aug. 15) and we will host a 3-day leadership training. Please pray that the students get excited about the vision and mission we feel God has put before us as a ministry team on campus this year. Please pray we will equip the students well for the spiritual work that is ahead this year.

- Outreach - The next few weeks will be filled with the last airport pick ups and many welcome efforts to meet new students. Would you pray that we make great connections with students, care for them well and have a chance to share the gospel with them through these gatherings?

• Big Howdy Welcome Party - We'll work with other Christian campus groups to host a welcome party for 1,000 new international students, providing a connection point for many local church volunteers (Aug. 17)

• Furniture Giveaway - We'll work with some of our local ministry partners to give away furniture and housewares to help new international students settle into their apartments (Aug. 18)

• Church Carpool - The first 6 Sundays of the semester, we take new students to local churches, helping them find a church home

• Fajita Feed - We'll feed 1,200 students in order to make connections and set up gospel appointments through contact cards (Aug. 27)

• BSM Nights - During the 2nd week of class, we are partnering with local churches to host gatherings each night of the week to connect with new students. (Aug. 27-31)

- Energy and health - As the rest of August will be incredibly full of ministry opportunities and outreach, please pray for energy and good health. Pray that we will find a good rhythm of service and rest.

- Funding - We are so close to reaching our funding goals as a BSM team. Would you pray that the Lord would provide 25 more poeople willing to partner with us at $100 a month?

Blessings to you! Until next time,

- Kaitlin and Mark

June Update

Yeshotsav
At the end of May, I (Kaitlin) had the incredible experience of serving as the local coordinator for Yeshotsav, a national retreat for Hindu background followers of Jesus. The planning team was made up of Campus Crusade and Bridges International staff and several Hindu Background Believers (HBBs). I was invited into the teams as the Dallas connection, helping arrange food, airport pick ups, child care. etc. It was an incredible weekend of hearing from the 60 HBBs from all over the nation (most who came from South Asia originally as international students) talk about how they were drawn to Jesus and the cost they have paid to follow him, many being ostracized from their families and more because of their decision to follow Christ but all of them saying that following Jesus is worth it. Several of them, who have attended the conference since it's beginning 4 years ago, said that the Yeshotsav group has become family to them, giving them the encouragement and admonishment they need to continue following Christ well.

These HBBs are key in reaching out to other Hindus and sharing the gospel with them.
- Would you pray for these HBBs as they faithfully share Christ with their Hindu family and friends?
- Would you pray that the Lord will draw more Hindus to himself?
- Would you pray that we at the UTD BSM would be able to build trusting relationships with Hindu/South Asian students on campus and that many would come to Christ?

Whirlwind Texas Travels
The summer is a time where our BSM team works on logistics and planning for the next school, raises support for our salaries and ministry budget and spends time meeting incoming students at freshmen/transfer orientations. Our team has been traveling here, there and yonder as we've been meeting with many about partnering with us in ministry for the next year.

As Mark and I have crossed Texas, we have been so blessed to spend time with many of you, catching up on what is happening in your lives and getting to share about the ways we are seeing God work at UT Dallas! God has been faithful through these meetings, and I'm now 79 percent funded for the next school year! This is a 20 percent increase from the last time I sent you an update!

- Would you pray that the Lord would provide additional funds so that I will be fully funded by August 1 and ready to serve new international students full-time this next school year?

- And praise God too as Brady, our associate director, is now fully funded and Jourdan, our cross-cultural specialist, is very close to being fully funded. We have one additional staff member, Grace, who is still working to be fully funded by Aug. 1. Would you pray for Grace to reach these goals as well?

We are so thankful for you and for your partnership. This is YOUR ministry too and we want you to know that you are making a difference at UTD.

Blessings to you! Until next time,

- Kaitlin and Mark

Celebrating the Semester!

Photo: (Top) The UTD BSM Staff and graduating seniors
(Bottom) We hosted a BSM banquet to celebrate all God has done this semester and to commission the seniors who served on our leadership team as they head out to do ministry through their careers. 

I can't believe it's mid May and we now have finished our first school of ministry back at UT Dallas! UTD is now quiet for another week and then it will be buzzing again with summer school and new student orientations. 

We won't try to pack in all the great semester news here but we did want to share a few quick moments worth celebration! Also, we are so thankful for your partnership, encouragement and prayers during Spring 2018. Ministry on this campus would not be possible without you!  

Highlights:
- Through our weekly Free Lunch, local volunteers, student leaders and BSM staff had more than 700 spiritual conversations and shared the gospel more than 300 times!

- 18 students and staff from UTD serve at Beach Reach in South Padre Island during Spring Break. The UTD team saw 4 students choose to follow Christ. 

- 2 students, Jeremiah and Grace, spent the semester preparing to serve for 10 weeks this summer on mission in New York and Alaska! Please pray for them as they leave next week to serve as student missionaries! 

- 3 international students and scholars from China chose to follow Christ through BSM connections and local church partnerships. 

This is just a little taste of what you'll get to read about in our full semester update that will arrive in your mailbox any day now! 

Blessings to you! Thanks for supporting us and making this ministry possible!

- Mark and Kaitlin 

Prayer Requests

• We have 10 new students coming on to our leadership team next fall, giving us a team of 25 students leaders ready to reach out to their campus next fall. 
• August will come soon than we think and that means thousands of new students (American and international) will be coming to UTD. Pray we will serve them well during their transition and that God will already be preparing their hearts to encounter the gospel while they are on campus. 
• In July, we will be coordinating all the airport pick ups for new international students coming to UTD. We are projecting 1,200 pick ups during July and August. Please pray that local churches will partner with us, being the first people to greet international students and serve them while they are in Texas. 
• We also are in a season of support raising for our team. Four out of our five BSM team raise support in order to serve on campus. Currently, Kaitlin is 60% funded. Jourdan is 79% funded. Brady is 75% funded and Grace will begin her training and support efforts on June 5. And Mark is diligently working to help everyone make support connections! Please pray that we would clearly share the story of what God is doing at UTD and that God would open hearts of people who would like to be part of the gospel being shared on campus! 
• Pray for our staff team to seek the Lord and His vision for the campus. Pray we will boldly proclaim the gospel to students and disciple them well so that they become mature in their faith, able to lead others in the faith as well. 

We are thankful for you and have been praying for you too. Please feel free to send us your prayer requests so that we know how to better pray for you! Blessings! 

New Effort: Alumni Connections!

Photo: In early May, we went to the national collegiate conference in Nashville and got to stop by to see two UTD alumni, Mackenzie and Danica, who now call Nashville home! 

BSM’s goal is that by the time students graduate, they will be faithful followers of Christ who know how to share the gospel and disciple others wherever the Lord sends them after college. UTD BSM is unique in that many of the BSM alumni stay in the Dallas area after graduation, and in March, we began a monthly alumni gathering for network, encouraging each other, and equipping them for ministry in their workplaces. We also will be adding in a senior student component, matching soon-to-be graduates with alumni who can mentor them during transition from college into the workplace. We are excited as we feel this is the next step in the big picture of discipleship for the UTD BSM.

Disciples Making Disciples

Photo: Ginnie, Christine and Ana

Our hope through our BSM efforts is that we can help students become disciples of Christ who mature in their faith and then themselves be disciple makers of Jesus. This year, we saw three BSM student leaders do just that. Christian, Ginnie and Ana (pictured) have been meeting with BSM staff (Kaitlin got to meet with Christine!) for weekly discipleship Bible study and mentoring, and in the fall semester, they initiated discipling freshmen women. Each lady connected with a freshmen and met with her weekly, spurring her on in her walk with Christ and teaching her how to share her faith and make disciples herself. Please pray that more relationships like these will take place through BSM!

Comet Cafe Runs

Each week, some of our student leaders and staff pair up and go to the Comet Cafe are in the Student Union to see if any people are willing to talk about the gospel. During the fall semester, Brady, our associate director, and a student went on a cafe run and met David, a Christian who had not gotten plugged into community yet. They invited him to weekly Bible study and he came! Soon this was a consistent habit. This Spring, he served on the Beach Reach team and now he has signed up to serve on the BSM student leadership team beginning in August. This is one thing we are about - helping Christ follows find community on campus, seek the Lord together and find ways to reach out with the gospel on their own campus.

Beach Reach 2018

This year, Mark took at team of 18 to serve on mission during Spring Break. South Padre is college student party central during Spring Break, but we go to serve and to share the gospel with the Spring Breakers through free van rides, pancake breakfasts and more. This year, our UTD team had 482 spiritual conversations, prayed for 349 students and saw 4 students choose to follow Christ! Also, we joined 700 BSM students from across the state, and as a whole, the Beach Reach group gave 13,897 van rides, had 8,934 gospel conversations, prayed with 8,781 people and saw 167 students chose to follow Christ during Spring Break.

International Student Spring Break

Originally we had a plan to take international students on a camping adventure in the Texas Hill Country, but early on in the semester, we sensed God had other plans. Instead, we had a staycation to reach out to the students who feel the need to stay on campus to study all of Spring Break. We hosted a dinner and game night at our house, a day of exploring downtown Dallas and a day of serving at Mission Arlington. It was a great way to build deeper relationships with many we have seen at Free Lunch during the semester and to include some of our student leaders and community volunteers in the effort as well. 

Chinese New Year Celebration

For Asian students, Chinese New Year typically is their favorite holiday, yet one that brings lots of homesickness being far away from family. This year, a community volunteer opened her home to our international student community group and we spent the New Year cooking traditional foods like Chinese Dumplings and Korean rice cake soup and playing . Some of our American BSM leadership students joined us, getting to learn about the things these Asian students hold dear. 

Free Lunch Growth and Connections

This semester, God opened doors to grow Free Lunch, reserving all three Galaxy rooms, allowing us to have the capacity for 300 students. Most weeks, we have been having well over 300 students and volunteers, and many gospel conversations have happened during this weekly lunch. If you would like to volunteer at Free Lunch with us next semester and be part of what God is doing there, feel free to email us and attend our training on Jan. 5, 2018 - bsm.utdallas@gmail.com

Here is a glimpse of what God is doing through this outreach! 

“One of the clearest ways I’ve seen God work this semester has been in my relationship with an international student from India named D*.  I first met D* at Free Lunch – he didn’t talk very much initially, but about halfway through lunch, a vocal atheist came and sat at our table.  This atheist quickly began asking really deep and challenging questions related to Christianity with a particular focus on heaven. It was a rare and exciting experience.  We wound up talking for over two hours, and D* quietly tagged along to listen to our conversation. The next week, D* sat at my Free Lunch table again, and we talked for another two hours about the previous week’s discussion. He continued coming to my table week after week, allowing me to share the gospel with him and discuss all sorts of topics, spiritual and non-spiritual, that he had questions about. Darshan recently came to the BSM’s Wednesday night Bible study for the first time, and he’s expressed interest in coming again. He’s also started reading C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” because of a C.S. Lewis quote in the Free Lunch questions. Though D* hasn’t made any commitment yet, it’s been amazing to see the way that God’s words have resonated with him – it looks very much like a sheep hearing the voice of the shepherd for the first time.” 

By Brian Bell, Sophomore Math/Computer Science Major from Sugar Land

Community and Equipping

Photo: (Top) A group pictures of the 5 BSMs in North Texas that participated in Fall Retreat in Cedar Hill, Texas, (Bottom) Students learning to share the gospel at Engage 24 training

Last weekend, we took a group of 31 students and staff to join a fall treat with 4 other BSMs from UT Tyler, Midwestern State, Tarelton State, and A&M Commerce. We had a great weekend of worshipping together, being equipped in the Word and growing in our love for each other. I'm amazed at what God does when we pull away from our normal schedule for a few days and give Him space to speak to us. 

As soon as we got back, we jumped into Engage 24 on our campus this week. Nationally, Baptist college ministries set aside Wednesday as an intentional 24 hour period of sharing the gospel on campus. Our UTD students got so excited about this and they planned gospel sharing activities for the entire week. The lead team paired freshmen with upperclassmen so they could go on Comet Cafe Runs throughout the week (a time where they go engage students in the Student Union Cafe in spiritual conversations). The students also held outreach booths in the Student Union where they engaged students in spiritual conversations via Soularium Cards (check them out at https://www.cru.org/train-and-grow/share-the-gospel/outreach-strategies/soularium.html). Also, two of our leaders planned a Wednesday night focused on training our 5 small groups in sharing the gospel and then spent the rest of the evening hosting outreach projects to meet knew people and engage them with God's story! 

It was great to see students share the gospel for the first time or grow in their confidence of the Holy Spirit working as they share the gospel. Please pray that this week becomes the norm for our group.... making gospel sharing a natural part of their lives! 

Blessings to you! Thanks for supporting us and making this ministry possible!

- Mark and Kaitlin 

Prayer Requests

• We had two students sign up for the state-wide student missions emphasis for Christmas break. Please pray for Mason who will serve in NYC Chinatown and Christine who will serve in Moldova for a portion of the Christmas break. They have much fundraising to do by mid November so please pray for provision for them. 

• We are at the midpoint of the semester. This is the time when students become weary and have potential to drop out of disciple and evangelism on campus. Please pray that they will press into their relationships with Christ and find strength and perseverance, reaping a harvest if they do not give up!

• We continue to have lots of work to do on our house, but praise God that 10 students and friends came to help us last weekend. Please pray that we can find a helpful and affordable drywall contractor to help us finish things up! Please pray that we will have a healthy balance of ministry time and time to finish things up on the house so that we can move in. 

We are thankful for you and have been praying for you too. Please feel free to send us your prayer requests so that we know how to better pray for you! Blessings! 

Mud Out in Houston

Photo: (Top) The team with Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick (the owners of one of the homes where we worked), (Bottom left) Sammy Ramos, pastor of Cistern Church, and Jere, a BSM student, work at tearing out sheetrock, (Bottom right) Kaitlin pulls out nails left after the sheet rock was removed.

Our hearts have been so heavy for our friends in Houston, and we have been looking for ways to help. Last weekend, we took a group of 10 UTD BSM students and staff to Houston to work with Cistern Church (the church plant we were a part of before moving to Dallas) to help clean out homes that were flooded by Hurricane Harvey. 

Houses in southwest Houston (where the church plant is focused) have mostly been cleaned out as the water receded in this part of the city first. Large piles of debris line the roads and the smell of mold fills the air as you drive through the neighborhood streets. Since this area is fairly situated now, we headed to Northeast Houston where the water receded a couple of days before our arrival and cleanup efforts were just getting started. We joined with some volunteers from Neartown Church and Cistern Church to clean out two houses in this area. 

Our team worked so diligently carrying soaked furniture, carpet and other household items out to the curb. They also ripped out soaked sheetrock, insulation and flooring before spraying down the framing that remained with bleach. This is just step one in a long road of recovery that these families will have to walk. 

Please continue to keep these families in your prayers!

- Mark and Kaitlin 

Prayer Requests

• Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick - one of the couples we helped while in Houston. This is the second time they are having to rebuild their home, as they were flooded in Hurricane Allison. Also, please pray for Mr. Fitzpatrick as he is having some health issues and needs surgery once they get their home situated.  

• We mentioned last week that our new house has been a challenge for us and that we are still living with friends because of many unexpected issues that have appeared. More issues came up this week and we are now spending the weekend ripping out the ceilings on the first floor so repair men can come next week. We feel this house is the one God has for us, but this journey has been much more challenging than expected. Would you pray against discouragement? And would you pray we have strength and wisdom to finish the tasks at hand while still investing in students relationships on campus?

• Our Fall retreat is the first weekend in October, and we are in the midst of inviting students to go with us. Would you pray that students will accept the offer and be willing to pull away for the weekend? Would you pray that this is a time that they open their hearts to encounter God, whether that be for the first time or just in a fresh, new way?