A New Year and New Challenges

NEW YEAR

For all of our friends up north, let us say with all sincerity, we feel for you regarding the intense cold!  I won’t complain a bit, but even in Florida we’ve had a cooler winter. The picture on the left is a cold windy day at the beach!

After a great Christmas and New Year season, kids are back to school, and things are Cru are in full swing.  Luke's baseball season begins this weekend, so we are looking forward to seeing him play again.  Aubrey has begun her last semester of college and is working on her senior thesis.

NEW CHALLENGES

Along with the HR team we lead, I’ve been serving for the past  10 months on the leadership team of Digital Strategies, the part of Cru that designs and delivers all of our web and technological solutions.  Bringing for different teams together to serve as one presents all kind of challenges, but I’ve got some good help.

One of the people I’m working with this year is Craig, who is serving at Lake Hart for one year after serving with his family overseas.  He and the team are doing a great job despite a steep learning curve.  It’s an honor to work with people like Craig who’s heart for the Lord and desire to serve make huge impact. 

We are so grateful for your partnership and investment in our lives and ministry with Cru.  Thank you for your faithfulness to us and to the Lord.

With love and thanks,

At a Charlie Brown Christmas at our Lake Hart HQ.

Glimpsing Your Impact

     I read an article this month about a Cru staff guy named Ralph.  You can read it too at Worldwide Challenge.   I know Ralph, but didn’t know he has been working at the University of Idaho with Cru for 36 years.  How cool is that?

     

     I thought, “What a great job he has!”   I thought “I wonder how many conversations he’s had with students and professors over that time?”  I thought about how his supporters and the body of Christ realize how important it is to have someone in place full time on college campuses to engage students and professors to introduce them to Jesus.

     It is amazing to me, as I think about it today, that our job exists.  We are only able to do this work because of you.  I wish we could all see the impact of our work.  We’ll never hear all the stories we are a part of helping write.

     This summer I assessed the risk of our activity in the country of South Sudan so one of our staff could go help and do some training.  I read the following story today.  It's very cool that this happened less than two months ago!

In September a small team of staff members and students traveled from Ethiopia to the brand new nation of South Sudan to train eight staff members and 39 volunteers in basic campus ministry and leadership. 

Each afternoon we did outreach and in the five days of the training we saw 276 students give their lives to Jesus. By God’s grace the team and trainees established six universities and developed a student leadership team for the city. 

     I’m hoping you read this before Thanksgiving because we want you to know that when we give thanks, we thank God for you.  We can never express the full extent of the gratitude we feel when we consider your faithful and generous partnership with us.  If we could write it bigger we would: 

Thank you!

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?”                                                                                             Thessalonians 3:9

     With gratitude,

                                                                                                   Barrett and Dayna

How can you be a missionary?

      One of our new staff is raising her support to serve with our Financial Services team.  She recently asked this question on a web forum for staff:

I’m getting some questions from current and potential ministry partners about how am I a missionary when I’m raising support to work in operations...Do you have any advice/experience on how you would answer this question? 

      How would you answer her question?  Here’s one answer she received:

“I use a military analogy. In order to have soldiers on the front lines in healthy fighting capacity, you MUST have a strong supply line and a corp of engineers. Ops can be seen as both. All those in the army are the missionaries serving full-time. A supporter is like the taxpayer that isn’t there full-time but is both contributing to and receiving the benefit of those serving full-time.            -Bryan       

     When I read her question I thought about Chris Hayes.  I met Chris 15 years ago; he had joined Cru after an engineering career with the US Government.

   Twenty years ago the Jesus Film Project had studios in three locations around the world and recorded 8 new languages each year for the film.  Chris developed a portable recording system that fit inside a suitcase.  There was nothing like it in the world.  Our teams were able to take it to remote villages and set up studios on site.

   The result was that we were able to record 40 or more languages each year.  Today the Jesus film is viewable in 1,188 languages.  Check them out at jesusfilmmedia.org.  Chris is a missionary and a hero in my book!

   We love having a role that supports every gospel presentation that happens through Cru around the world.  We are proud to work alongside hundreds of missionaries here at our headquarters who are making an eternal impact.

Thank you for partnering with us!