Brothers,Here are some of the highlights:
1. God allowed our campus ministry to baptize 19 college students (10 men, 9 women) this semester!!! In our 12 years here, the most baptisms we have ever had in a semester was 16 college students. These are really great young men and women and I am excited about how God is going to use their lives to glorify Him.
2.We had a 9 week "Ministry Training Program" in which we had about 30 people regularly attend. It was focused on the "Leadership of Jesus" with classes taught by our congregational teacher, Randy Summers. It also included weekly scripture memory, accountability, and practice preaching.
3. Our campus flag football team, called "The Company of Christ", won the UF intramural championships. On a campus of 50,000+ students, this is quite remarkable. The championship game was played 2 weeks ago and was held in The Swamp at Ben Hill Griffin stadium. It was so cool! We beat a team called "The Bad Boys" on the final play of the game. With no time on the clock and down by 1 point, Tyler Chacon threw a 3 yard touchdown pass to Nilson Ramirez as he dove out of bounds. It was unreal! We all stormed the field! I love the names of the 2 teams in the final game - epic. We will now be playing in the National Collegiate Flag Football Championships held in College Station, TX in 2 weeks. We played in Nationals last year and lost in the Elite Eight.
I want to lift up Kyle Eastman and Britney Bogle (now Britney Wilson as of yesterday), as well as Tyler & Tiffany Chacon for their tremendous spiritual leadership within our campus ministry. We are very blessed here in Gainesville to have them leading our campuses.
I love you all very much. Have a great Christmas!
In Christ,
Troy
Update 1/11/12
Brothers and sisters,
I informed you last month in my good news sharing that our campus ministry flag football team here in Gainesville won the UF intramural championships in flag football and was heading to the National Collegiate Flag Football Championships being held in Pensacola, Fl. The tournament was held over the Christmas break with 25 teams from all over the US, including teams from California, Massachusetts, Iowa, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and N.C., just to name a few. In order to enter the tournament, you had to have won a regional tournament (usually statewide). Our team's name is "Company of Christ", rivaling other team names like "The Immortals", "Bad Boys", and "We're Just Better Than You" (OK, so I made the last one up, but you get the idea). Anyhow, we won the national championship! We beat a team from Georgia in the finals by a score of 25-6. Amazing! To my knowledge, this is the first time in the history of our fellowship that we have had a disciple flag football team win a national championship! Pretty cool. One of our campus interns, Tyler Chacon, was named an All-American and Nick Gibrone, a young man who has been on our team for 2 years but was just baptized in October, was named the tournament MVP. What a blessing from God this has been to our campus ministry!
In Christ,
Troy
Additional good news: We are excited to be sending Nilson Ramirez, a UF graduate who has served as a campus intern here in Gainesville for most of the last 4 years, to NY to serve in the full-time ministry leading within the Manhattan campuses. He will be sent out on Jan 28.