Faith Bible Church

What’s up everyone? My name is David and I am a recent graduate from Texas State University in San Marcos, TX. The community at Faith Bible has been an amazing group to return to on my times in which I came home from college. I wanted to tell you all about some of what the LORD has done in my life recently. Texas State has 36-38,000 students and roughly 700-900 students involved in campus ministries (that is just the main meetings; even less attend small groups in which true community is achieved). I did not join with a church truly until the end of 2008 when I began attending the Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX. Through this Body, I met my brother Marcus Marroquin who asked me to help start a ministry to staff a camp that helped reach incoming Bobcats with the Gospel and work to help the ministries reach the freshmen before they even get to campus. The LORD gave us a staff of 40 for the newly named RISE Retreat, He blessed us with roughly $27,000 in the first seven months, and we saw salvation and restoration fall on the students in the first camp. It was truly humbling to see that living on mission with each other binds the Body in a way that the Word describes in the opening of the Book of Acts. During the school year, we experienced countless times of trusting our Father with finances and begging Him to pour into us…and He did. I cannot describe the opportunities to love others that He granted through my classes and my job. As I geared up to leave San Marcos, I had more people than ever before coming to me admitting the pain in their lives simply because they’d seen the LORD move in my life. There is truly something to the model that Jesus left us. We live life with people, we display love, and we preach the Gospel always…and we pursue everyone just as He pursued us. In the two days before this year’s Retreat, Nate Warren and I took a kid to the ER after treating his hand for a severe knife wound and shared the Gospel with him after his father refused to come to the ER for him. We shared the Gospel with a homeless man and let him stay at our apartment. This past weekend was my second and last retreat with RISE. My role this time was the Prayer Executive and I spent most of the weekend in communion with the LORD begging Him to change lives and He did. Salvation and restoration came into both the staff and students at RISE and our Father humbled me with the gravity that it’s all for His glory. In 5 years, no one at Texas State will remember what I helped with, but they will remember HIS NAME. All glory to Him for that fact.

"Living to make Him known in Texas"    David Stanfill