Written by Rosa L.

After several days of flyering and preparation, the Freshmen Welcome Night had finally arrived to kick off the new semester. We experienced the familiar yellow shirts donned by the welcome team, the smell of good food in the air, and the excitement that encompassed. Many of the students helped out with the night from mc-ing to acting in the skit to even performing the special song at the end of the night. Pastor Manny gave a message, challenging us to make the most of college, as this is a special time to investigate Christianity. He even used a football field to demonstrate how short our lives are. After the message, we played a game of line charades and it was hilarious how phrases were distorted from one end to the other. The night ended on a sweet note as we all went out for dessert. Overall it was a great night of meeting new people and marveling at how much God has worked in our midst. We look forward to what great things this semester will bring!

Written by Jenny C.

Last Friday, we had our annual Koinonia Spring Welcome Night, where over 100 total students joined us in Mezes Auditorium for delicious teriyaki bowls, a poignantly hilarious skit depicting the toils of life, and a short, thought-provoking talk given by one of our staff, Bryan Song. He exhorted us to think critically about our lives and to use our youth to seek truth in the Bible, a message that resonated with many in attendance. It was a joy to see all the sophomores and juniors coming together to put on this event and engage our campus in spiritual conversation, whether through flyering, cooking, or volunteering for the skit team. We capped off the night with a rollicking game of Ultimate Price is Right where teams competed to guess figures such as the weight of Bevo or the price of a meal at Chik-fil-A. It was a great end to the kickoff of what is sure to be a great semester!

This past weekend, over a hundred of us headed to Camp Bucker in the Texas Hill Country for our annual Winter Retreat! The weekend was packed with challenging messages from Pastor Will Kang (of our Davis church), testimonies from many of our church members, moving times of praise and exciting times of fellowship and fun, personal times of prayer. God worked mightily in many peoples’ lives and we look forward to everything He has in store this coming year and having the chance to live it out together.

This past week Koinonia hosted the Freshman class for dinner at the 605. Over 70 freshmen met on together on the first night of the semester a delicious dinner and exciting games, followed by an encouraging message from Pastor Manny to the freshmen to earnestly seek God this semester. It was a great time of seeing everyone again and kicking off the semester with some great food and exciting games!

This past Winter Break, 37 students from Austin took part in mission trips to San Diego, Taiwan and Cambodia. Our team in San Diego took part in three intense days of campus outreach, culminating in 3 campus welcome nights happening simultaneously on the UCSD campus. Two of our members joined students from other Gracepoint churches to spend the first part of Winter break doing campus outreach in Taiwan at NCTU and NCHU, sharing the Gospel message and the meaning of Christmas with the Taiwanese students, many of whom have never heard the true meaning of Christmas. Many of our members also joined a mission team to Cambodia for a packed time of village outreach, teaching at Life University and village outreach, including an exciting Gospel Night! All three of our mission teams were able to see God work mightily and we’re looking forward to the next mission trips this coming Summer.

After one of the last TFN’s before everyone went back for winter break, we had a game time where we broke up into teams and were given ordinary items to come up with a structure that would be judged based on:

1. aesthetics
2. stability
3. height

What an amazing time we had at the Thanksgiving Retreat! Not only did we get to meet so many brothers and sisters from across all our Gracepoint churches, but we got to sit back and marvel at all the salvation work God has done in our midst! (Not to mention some gratuitous dancing during our fellowship time.)

Here are all the scary videos from Koinonia’s Halloween Make Your Own Scary Movie Night!
Warning: Do not watch these videos alone at night. =)

And the winning video of the Scary Movie Night goes to….