Fall 2022 Recap!

 Happy New Year!

    I hope you all had a great holiday season, and I hope 2023 is off to a fantastic start! We had a fantastic fall semester at CTF, and our spring semester is already at full swing. I'm so excited to update y'all on everything that we did over the fall semester, and all of our plans for this Spring. It's a lot to cover, so I hope you take the time to read through it!

CTF Nights

    Over the fall semester, we were able to cover a variety of topics that we felt like would really benefit our students. We spent the first few weeks covering Evangelism in a series that we called Be the Good News. It was really cool to see our students respond to that series by going out into their schools and living out what it means to be invitational as a follower of Jesus. In our next sermon series we spent a few weeks covering some of Jesus' interactions with people in the Gospels. We talked about how Jesus interacted with Zacchaeus, the bleeding woman, the woman at the well, and the Pharisees. In our last series of the semester, we addressed some topics that the students asked us to talk about. We were able to do a mini-series on relationships where we talked about good friendships, wisdom in dating, and God's design for sexual purity. Then we spent a couple weeks talking about a Godly view of entertainment and social media. It was so refreshing and cool to hear feedback from our students about how much they appreciated us talking about some "harder topics" like relationships and entertainment. Overall, our Wednesday nights were awesome last semester! 

A talk at one of our CTF nights!

Events!

    Once a month we have what we call Wednesday Night Live! Instead of a "normal" Wednesday night service, we have an event. We do this for a few different reasons. We want to be able to offer something to our students that they can invite people to who might not be comfortable coming into a youth group setting. We also want to regularly offer our students a place that they can have a lot of fun together and grow in friendship! We had a lot of fun events this past semester! 

-In September we hosted a sand volleyball tournament at Wylie High School. Students brought their own teams, and got to compete against each other for some fun prizes. It was a great outreach event!

-In October, we had our annual Songs and S'mores event. We went to a local park, brought a fire pit, sang some worship songs around the fire, and made s'mores! 

-In November, we had a Friendsgiving event. We hosted a big meal the week before Thanksgiving, ate together, played some games, and worshipped. 

-In December, we had our annual Christmas Party! There was food, decorations, games, trivia, raffles, and lots of gifts! 

-Also in December, we hosted an event in between Christmas and New Years called Deep Dive. Deep Dive is where we get together and offer our students a more in-depth teaching on Scripture or a spiritual topic. The topic for this Deep Dive was Heaven and Hell. I wasn't expecting a huge turnout because we hosted the event over the Holidays, but we had over 15 students there which was really cool! 

Deep Dive!

Other Exciting Things!

    We constantly have exciting and fun things happening outside of our Wednesday Nights and Events. 

I had the opportunity to go on campus at Wylie East HS every week and speak to the Freshman and JV Football team on game days. Every week I got to read the Bible with them, talk about Jesus, and encourage them to get to know Him. Legally, I'm required to tell them that they don't have to be there to listen to me talk, and that if they don't want to hear about Jesus or His Word they can excuse themselves. Throughout the entire season, not one student got up to leave. They all stayed to hear me preach about Jesus every week! I estimated that between the two teams I got to speak to about 100 students every week! How cool is that? 

    I've also had the opportunity to do the same thing for one of the Wylie Junior High Basketball teams. I get to go speak to the team every week before one of their games! God is definitely opening doors for us in these public schools, and I'm so excited to see the kind of fruit that He'll bring out of it!

    I've continued by Bible studies with the Baseball and Football teams at Wylie East too. It's honestly one of my favorite things that I get to do. Every week on Wednesdays we meet at lunch to open the Word and discuss it together. I love it! 

    Another super exciting thing that happened this semester is one of our students got baptized! Her name is Whisper and she decided to make Jesus Lord of her life and proclaim her faith in Him. We're always excited when students make the decision to follow Jesus! 

Spring 2023

    The Spring semester has started and we have hit the ground running! Our first Wednesday night of the year we had our annual Alumni Night. It was so much fun to have some of our college students and graduates come back to see what we're doing and encourage our current students!

 

    Something else that I'm really excited about for this semester is that I've started a new FCA group with the Wylie East Golf team! Like I said earlier, God is very obviously opening doors in the schools for us to partner with teachers and coaches to minister to these students. I'm really pumped to see what God does on the golf team this year! 

Prayer Requests!

-Please pray for our students' mental health. So many students struggle with anxiety and depression, and really need help. We get to provide comfort and support, but they need our prayers too!

-Pray for the students that I get to work with at Wylie East and Cooper JH, and the FCA groups that I help lead. 

-Pray for the students that I get to mentor and study the Bible with: Kyle, Eli, Zach, Matthew, Trent, Tanner, and Hunter.

-Pray for our Wednesday night services. This semester we're going through some of Jesus' parables!

-Pray for our staff and volunteer leaders.

    I hope this update encourages you! God is doing so many amazing things through CTF and our students and leaders. Your prayers and financial support are a HUGE part of keeping us running. I can not thank you enough for your partnership in this work. 

Thank you so much!!

Love,

William Royal