Dallas Vision Trip
Written by Jolene J. This past weekend, about 50 of us visited Dallas, starting with the first crew who left Austin on Thursday morning to visit various campuses, with the hope and vision that one day we might be able to reach them as God opens the door for us.
We went to four schools: UT Dallas (UTD), University of North Texas (UNT), UT Arlington (UTA), and Southern Methodist University (SMU). From UNT’s artsy ambience
to SMU’s classic Hellenistic architecture,
each campus gave a distinctive vibe and feel. Though there weren’t many students, the schools themselves gave us snippets of what the students who attend the institutions might be like.
Pastor Jonathan led the various campus tours, and we prayed for the students as we walked around in pairs and groups. Some of us were lucky enough to meet and talk and even engage in a few spiritual conversations with local students, who were very open to talk about their school, religion, and Christianity. Meeting these students who were eager to learn more about Christ gave us so much encouragement and hope. What’s most special is that a couple of UTD students actually joined our Friday night bible study in Dallas! And as always, good companies call for good food, so a group of us went to Cafe Brown Sugar for some exquisite and mouthwatering desserts with our visitors.
That same night, a group of us hosted a worldview camp for the youth group at Arlington Chinese Church, one of our church member’s home church. Starting with some exciting ice breakers that helped us learned each others’ names, different people shared their testimonies and taught different workshops such as Worldview and Media, Reliability of the Bible, the Case for Resurrection, and Science and Faith. The youths were not only very welcoming and open, but also made good audiences as they were very engaged and attentive to the program that we prepared. To many, the night presented a lot of thought-provoking questions and eye-opening concepts that were very relevant to their lives.
The trip concluded with an exhilarating tournament of whirlyball, a competitive combination of lacrosse and basketball played in bumper cars, and dinner at the Super H-Mart.
Through this vision trip to the various campuses in Dallas, we are all the more encouraged to fulfill of our vision--to build an Acts 2 church in every college town-- and challenged to step out of our comfort zone when sharing gospel messages and carrying through God’s great commission for His followers. We look forward to coming back to Dallas in the near future!