Mav Stampede Round 10!

 

A worship night with all the campus ministries on campus to be unified in heart & mind as we all go into Mav Stampede! 

MAV STAMPEDE!!

If you have been with me for more than a year you know what this month is all about, its welcome week!! The last two weeks have been nonstop crazy for us down at UTA. The last half of August is when college students all start coming back to campus, whether that be for the first time or fourth time, they're back! At UTA we call these weeks Maverick Stampede (our mascot is a Maverick). Our staff & student leaders give up pretty much anything resembling a normal life for these two weeks so we can be present at almost every event the university puts on to welcome students back along with some of our own events. We do this because this window of time is precious. There is no other window of the year, where students are more receptive & open to friendship. Our goals in these weeks are to welcome & connect with as many people as possible & hopefully connect many of them Jesus & community in the 10 months that follow. This also happens to be our 10th anniversary as a ministry at UTA, so that is pretty special! I have a ton of pictures I want to show you to walk you through these last couple weeks, but first I want you to clear most clearly how thankful I am for you & your support as I am out on campus. It is so special & energizing to know I have you rooting & praying for us & all these new students. Thank you so much. 

We always start off mav stampede by helping out with freshman move in! Our student leaders volunteer with the university, while our staff (because we aren't students) walk around and pass out water bottles. It is always crazy to us that the university never offers water to parents & students moving in the blazing Texas summer heat. We love getting to bless their first day on campus with something as simple as water! 

Mav Stampede prep with our student leaders is also one of our first kick of events. Its exactly what it sounds like, preparing them for mav stampede! This is a pic from this while we were worshiping together.  

We always have a large number of students come to church with us this first weekend! Our little church was bursting at the seams to contain all the new faces these past couple weeks. 

During the day, our staff tabled all morning & afternoon. We passed out free iced coffee and told people who were interested about our ministry & what we are about. 

UTA hosted a movie night on the lawn. They showed Pitch Perfect which drew a large crowd of girls haha. This whole group of girls looking at the camera were girls we met just in the first few days! 

During the week we hosted a petting zoo along with our iced coffee table, always a crowd favorite! In the blue shirt in the middle is one of our student leaders Sarai. I get to mentor her this year, she is so passionate about God & loves people well, I am thrilled to get to meet with her! 

Here are two more of the student leaders I get the honor of mentoring this year, Melanie (L) and Sarah (R). They are both the best, be praying for them and the core they lead together! 

THURSDAY NIGHT FELLOWSHIP!! 

These three pictures are from our first TNF of the year. We had about 220 students come to our first service of the year, which was crazy! For reference our biggest TNF ever has hovered around 170. The stack of cards I'm holding is about 120 filled out cards that new students filled out to get connected to a core. Our ministry had about 120 people in it last year,  I seriously was floored. The last picture is from our after event, where we took all of them bowling! 

Our last event was a Bob Ross Painting night, where my co-pastor Graham dressed up as Bob Ross and walked students through one of his classic paintings. It was a smash hit! We prepped for about 120 students and had closer to 300- we event got featured in the school news paper- link. At one point the lights powered off, and all the students just pulled out their flash lights and kept painting. It was such a fun night. The final picture is of more girls I get to mentor this year: Trinity (front), Sabrina (glasses), and Sarah again in the back haha. 

Thank you again for making all of this possible, you have loved every student we connected this week and they don't even know your name. Myself & our campus is so blessed by you. 

Until next month, 

Sophie