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God prepares hearts for divine appointments

As Lexie (name changed) was leaving campus, her path crossed with two Cru staff serving at her school in East Asia.  That day Lexie was down, struggling with school, and just wanted to go home. Fortunately, God had been preparing her heart for this moment. Lexie is a rarity in East Asia: she speaks English, knows a Christian, and was interested in learning more about Jesus.

While talking with Lexie about spiritual things, she admitted- "I have evil in me...I don't deserve Jesus."

These two staff members walked through the gospel with her, explaining that Jesus loves her just as she is, and he died for her. She did not have to do anything to deserve Jesus, He gives himself freely to those who invite Him in as savior.

Lexie was overwhelmed by this good news, the grace that God gives us through Jesus. God had been preparing her for this moment, and opened her eyes to see her need to accept Christ into her life.

Our God is sovereign and works in mighty ways to bring people all over the world into a relationship with himself. Lexie now understands how great grace is, and she wants others to be able to hear about Christ's love for them. Lexie is a huge answer to pray for this staff team in East Asia who have been praying for someone to be an ambassador for Christ on her campus!

Expedition: Ukraine

Last week, our Expedition Cru team arrived in Lviv, Ukraine via an overnight train from Budapest. The Expedition team is made up of 5 recent college grads, who will spend the next 10 months in Eastern Europe. Each month they will travel to a new city, in a new country. They will seek out believers in churches and on college campuses who want to their fellow countrymen for Christ. They will train and equip these believers, who will launch spiritual movements. Then, it's on to a new city.

Jordan, the team leader writes this about their first few days in Ukraine:

"We got in a van with a Lviv Cru staff member to head to Ivano-Frankivsk, our first ministry city in western Ukraine. For parts of the journey we were on the worst roads I have ever been on! The rest of Sunday was spent securing an apartment and getting settled in.

Monday morning, we gathered to pray and then we went to meet with an area youth director. He had invited three other men. They all have a heart to reach international students with the Gospel, so that those who are studying here will return home and impact their cultures and friends. These are primarily Islamic, Hindi, Buddhist and Atheistic students.

Tuesday, two of my teammates met with Baffour, a student from Ghana. Baffour has started to organize a Christian student movement on campus, and is also already sharing is faith on his own. He types John 3:16 on thin slips of paper, cuts them apart, and then shares his faith with others by explaining the Gospel and then giving out the slips of paper. Baffour was ecstatic when we showed him the evangelistic tools that Cru Ukraine uses to share their faith. He will likely be another key volunteer as he is so eager to learn.

In two days, we already may have met two key volunteers. God is working mightily and this is just the start. Pray for endurance, discernment and to be Spirit-led as we move forward."

No doubt you've seen Ukraine in the news lately. But we are trusting God to use our steps of faith in the country to launch and grow movements of people who follow Jesus, and want to share him with others.

Reflecting on a Summer in 4J

I've heard it takes one day to recover for every hour of time change you experience when traveling. Returning home from the Middle East meant 8 hours of jet lag recovery, which I think was pretty accurate.

After 6 weeks overseas, I feel like it's taken another 6 weeks to get back to a sense of "normal." But here we are, a few days away from the kickoff of another school year, and I realize I haven't spent much time blogging about the summer I had in the land we in Cru call "4th Journey."

This is the 4th country I’ve had the privilege to travel to in the last 2 years, and what I continue to find in every city I visit is that people are searching for purpose and hope in their lives. They are searching for something to put their trust in. Most put their trust in their government, or themselves, or their religion, or their family.

There are many stories I could share with you about students that we met and conversations that were had. I will tell you one story, about a man I will call "E." Our mission team met E early in the summer. Some of the guys on the team noticed that E had a tattoo in his arm that is from a video game, and decided to strike up a conversation with him. The guys talked about video games, and also got into several spiritual conversations about what E believes. One day, Troy, a student from a school in Wisconsin, had some free time. He decided to call up E and see what he was up to.

E was free and wanted to meet up! Troy knew that we only had a few days left in our city before we left for America. He decided to take a chance and be honest with E and share his life story with him. In the past, Troy had a serious drug problem, and nothing in his life made him happy. Troy explained that when he found out who Jesus was and what he had done for Him on the cross, he realized that everything he was searching for could be found in Christ. The hope and joy and purpose he was looking for could be found through a relationship with God. E was amazed; he never heard anything like that before!

E also had a history with drugs and was searching for joy and purpose in his life. E and Troy walked to E's house, and along the way, Troy explained the Gospel to him. E said he had a desire to follow Jesus, and asked Christ to come into his life right then and there. A few days later, E was able to meet the long-term team of missionaries in our city, and go to church for the first time in his life.

I hope that in the coming months and years, as I stay in touch with the long-term team in our city, that I will hear stories of how God uses E to reach his city and country with the Gospel.

What a powerful story of God’s work. It was encouraging to see our students take steps of faith and share their beliefs- but also to build bridges with people who believe something different than what they believe. Building these bridges because we love others as God has loved us, was our goal this summer, and should be our goal in and every day no matter where we are.

Our team had spent the summer prayer and fasting for God to work. Towards the end, our students were starting to realize that even though we were praying for big things, we might not see God bring someone to faith in Christ while we were in country. We had many conversations about the purpose of our trip: to plant seeds of the Gospel and to wait expectantly for God to grow them. We are not in control of the growth. We cannot reason someone into believing in Jesus; If we can "convince" someone into believing, someone else can "convince" them out of it. I think we all understood in a new light the "definition" of successful witnessing: stepping out in faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. We really understood this concept in a new way this summer. After talking through this, we saw E make a decision, which was like the cherry on top of an already awesome summer!

Final week in 4J

It's hard to believe this is our last week in the land of "4th Journey"! This week we will have final goodbyes with our friends as well as a final picnic where we will introduce students that we've met who are truly seeking God to the staff team that is here full time. At the end of this week our team will head to the capital city in our country for a few days of debrief and touring, then it's back home

It's been a crazy summer full of fun memories, sweet stories of seeing God work on campus, and deep growth happening in our lives. The students on our team are incredible - they are so passionate about seeing the Gospel impact this land where there are so few believers and where hearts are hardened towards the free gift of grace. We are trusting that while we may not see any visible fruit from our summer here, God is pursuing hearts of people here. We know that he is sovereign and he cares about this country - even more than we do.

Second update from 4th Journey

We have had a great first couple weeks on campus here in 4th Journey. By the end of week 1, our team was able to meet hundreds of people, and had spiritual conversations with 79 people. With 32 other students, we were able to do a full Gospel presentation. We were also able to re-meet 4 students for a second appointment. We have started counting these individuals with pasta to give us a visual representation of the influence we are having here.

We also have written down every person's name that we've counted thus far so we can pray for them daily. We are definitely seeing the need to cover our work in prayer, that the Lord would bless our efforts and somehow break through the spiritual walls that people have constructed in this place.

We're learning a lot about the culture and language. For a vast majority of the people we've talked with, we are the first followers of Jesus they have ever met. Despite this, there are lots of lies they have been brought up to believe about the Bible, Jesus and the trinity. Please pray for God to open hearts and minds of people we talk to - there are so many obstacles to people understanding. We know it could take many months, maybe even years, for these students we've met to come to believe in Jesus and his work on the cross- if they do at all. But, this hasn't stopped us from pursuing people, because you never know who you might meet and how God might have prepared them to hear about Him.

The team is doing well and most of our students can't get enough of meeting with their new friends. Even though we have a small team of 8 male students and 5 female students (plus me and 3 staff), it is evident that the Lord brought the right students here. They are so passionate about living lives that honor the Lord and making new friends with the hope of sharing Christ with them. They encourage ME daily!

Week 1: Ben Yaptim

Our first few days on campus have flown by, and we're seeing God provide some unique opportunities to share the gospel with Middle Eastern college students. Over the first 2 days, our team had spiritual conversations with 30 people, and presented the gospel to 20 more people. We weren't sure what to expect but we are thankful for each of these people we've been able to connect with. We also have bibles that are printed in our country, in the local language, which is a huge resource for us. We hope to go through our entire box of 20 new testaments over the course of our time here.

I'm enjoying learning about the culture here and trying my hand at the language. Along with that comes many embarrassing and awkward moments, but luckily both sides have just been able to laugh them off.

One thing that's surprised me is how many people think that we are German. There is actually a decent number of Germans here, and while most of us on the team are of German descent, I guess I assumed it would be obvious that we are all Americans. Today I was mistaken for a Middle Eastern, (which I thought was hilarious).

I have dubbed this week "ben yaptim!" week - which means "I did it!" As I order food on my own, navigate the bus routes and subway lines, and find my way around campus I am excited to learn I can exist in a foreign place. It's a feeling I've felt a few times before, but also different now as I lead the team and help others live in a new place.

Today I was able to sit down and talk with 9 different women on campus, which was really fun - especially because I was with Hayley, a girl on my team who is a student at USD. We met two women whose names mean "Secret" and "Melody" in their language; they were especially fun to meet with. Please pray that we'd be able to meet up with them again in the coming weeks.

I hope to share some photos this weekend, so stay tuned for another update :)

We made it!

The 4th Journey summer project has hit the ground in the Middle East! Our first 48 hours together as a team were pretty eventful as we traveled to our secure location.

We gathered together on Sunday, May 18 for a final night of briefing and then took off from MSP airport on Monday, May 19. On our first flight from Minneapolis, we sat on the tarmac for an hour waiting for a lightening storm to pass. Luckily it moved fairly quickly!

We landed in DC with plenty of time for a bite to eat before boarding our 5p flight to Frankfurt. An hour after take off, someone had a heart attack on the plane and we made an emergency landing in Boston. After 2 hours of sitting on the tarmac while the pilots worked on paperwork and the passenger was removed, the pilot announced we would be taking off.

Shortly after taxing to the runway, the pilot announced there was a problem with the engine and we would need a replacement part, if they could fix it at all.

We waited in our seats while a tow truck came to tow us to the gate, the maintenance crew replaced the fuel valve in the engine, and then the crew did more paperwork.

After another 2 hours on sitting in the tarmac, we were ready for takeoff again.

We landed in Frankfurt at Noon, 5 hours after we were scheduled to arrive. Since our connecting flight to our country was scheduled for 9am, we weren't sure when we'd be re-booked.

Because we were so late we had to deboard the plane on the tarmac, where we waited for airport buses to pick us up and shuttle us to the main terminal. We then waited in line after line to get our tickets rebooked.

Thanks to a wonderful Lufthansa ticket agent named Christoff, we were able to get seats on the 945pm flight to our final airport.

We landed there about 1am, and then spent 2 hours getting through customs and picking up luggage. Thankfully this all went smoothly - and we even got a toblerone on the flight :) I think this is also the flight where I lost my iPod, but I'm not totally sure. I'm still hopeful that I might find it, but it's probably gone forever.

Now that we were in the right country, we had just a 2 hour ferry ride left to our final destination. Because they only run a few times a day, we had to spend the night in the city. Luckily a fellow staff person met us at the airport and arranged for a hotel and bus. It was 4am by the time we got to our hotel, and we were so tired from our travels we slept until Noon the next day!

After grabbing some wonderful middle eastern food for lunch and touring around a bit, we walked to the ferry station. We were quite a site: 17 Americans who had been traveling for 60 hours trying to navigate the narrow cobblestone streets with 2-3 bags per person. We only walked a kilometer or so, but it felt like several miles!

The ferry ride was 2 hours, and once we docked, we boarded another bus to take us to our apartments. By then it was 9pm and we were greeted by the staff team here and some yummy lamb pizza. Needless to say, we were relieved to be "home"!

Federico's Full Story

In my last monthly newsletter I shared about a tool that Cru uses called "Soularium." Because we live in such a visual culture, we've developed a tool to use photos to initiate spiritual conversations. It's easy to use the photos to learn more about the person you're meeting with, and also easy to transition into a Gospel presentation after the photo survey is done.

I love this tool. I've even used it with my Cru staff team and modified the survey so that we can learn more about their lives and where they are at in their walk with the Lord. Another great benefit of using the photo tool - it's FUN!

Anyway, part of my letter briefly shared the story about a college student in Uruguay called Federico. He has a pretty great story and I couldn't fit it all into my newsletter, so here's the full story. There are a few typos and odd statements but I wanted to keep the full integrity of his letter. It's a long story, but definitely worth reading. Enjoy!

Federico writes:

I once believed in God, when I was little. My family raised me Catholic and so we “believe in God” but the truth is, like most people in my country, we seldom practice religion.

I stopped believing in the existence of God when I entered High School, since then my faith had only declined: from professing Catholicism I became agnostic only to quickly embrace a strong atheism. My reluctance to religion was such that I even thought for a long time that Jesus, the man, had never existed. Furthermore, in the “spectrum of theistic probability” that Richard Dawkins talks in The God Delusion I placed myself –like Dawkins– as a 6.9 (the spectrum goes from 1 to 7).

When I was in my first year of College a group of US students approached me wanting to do a survey with images. It wasn’t until later that I found that it was a spiritual survey called Soularium. I don’t know why but I didn’t start a debate about religion and God like I usually did.

Instead, we talked and exchange Facebook profiles and never talked again. I didn’t know that they were part of a Summer Project held by Cru.

My story continues two years later when a series of highly coordinated events took place. First I enrolled to a seminar by mistake. The seminar took place five Thursdays and in order to get the credit you had to attend four of the five talks. I went to the first one but then I missed the next two. When I went to the third I talked with the teacher about it and he said he would see what he could do. I knew I wasn’t going to get the credit and the seminar wasn’t something I wanted to do in the first place, but anyways I attended the last talk and it blew my mind. The topic of the seminar was “Philosophy between Science and Religion” and the speaker was a teacher at my university that has a P.H.D. in the field and is one of the most respected philosophers of South America –things I didn’t know until the last day.

What started as a way to get a credit ended with a conversation that made me realize the existence of God. But I wasn’t prepared to have a personal relationship with Him or similar, instead what my teacher explained to me was that it is one thing to philosophically understand the existence of God and another very different thing is religion. So I was fine accepting God but not religion, especially because I wasn’t sure what religion was right or different from the others.

And here is where Cru gets involved again. First I met one STINTer at one of my college campuses, but I had to go, so I only grasped his first name. Then, two weeks later I was studying for my finals and so when I passed the entrance of the college I see a girl holding the same pictures from the survey I took two years before. I knew they were from the US so I walked into them and asked to take the survey. After finishing the survey they explained to me what Cru is, their mission and vision, and doing chitchat I asked if they knew the guy I met two weeks earlier and they said they did.
 
So I met with the guy again and he explained Christianity in a way I had never heard before. Then he invited me to the last Cru meeting of the year. I wasn’t sure but I decided to go anyways. At the end of the event they presented a camp, I was on my vacations so I went. It wasn’t what I had in mind but I liked it in some way. One of the last nights I finally accepted Jesus. Later, talking with the stinters, they told me that it was very odd how I met them: I was the only one who the first stint/er talked with in that campus, and the second group that I encountered in the other campus said they never went to campus in the morning.

The last day of camp the staff of Cru invited everyone to a Summer Project, pointing out the theme of the camp “Formers of Movements that Transform the Nations.” For my perspective it was God who was calling me to go, so I did.

At first I was going to stay just for a few days, but seeing how much everyone was excited to share and the love of the family that was hosting us I prayed to stay the whole first week. And I could stay! Then out of nowhere my parents allowed me to stay until the weekend after that. I was learning so much about Christianity and how to develop my personal relationship with God that I liked every moment of the camp, especially the times when we shared the Gospel.

So I prayed again to stay the whole second –and last– week because I couldn’t stay but had to study for my exams instead. But God surprised me again and I could stay the whole Summer Project (Amy here -- this project is similar to our American summer projects and was the first time we tried them in Uruguay.)

Those three weeks –one at camp and two at the Summer Project– felt like a year, but in a good and special way. From being a strong ten-year atheist I became a Christian willing to share the Gospel, the change of my life and His grace with everyone I could (family, friends and classmates).

Recap of TCX 2013

At the end of December we hosted our annual winter Cru conference, Twin Cities Xperience (TCX). This 4 day event is a chance for college students from around the Upper Midwest to get together with other believers, get encouraged in their walk with the Lord, and be equipped to reach others with the Gospel.


This year, students heard from 3 powerhouse speakers -- including KP Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia. He encouraged students to read as much as they can now- especially books that will "make your life miserable...like mine." He was referencing his book Revolution in World Missions, which you can get for free here. I can say, it changed my view on global missions, and a lot of other things. I read this book right before I finished raising support and took my Global Missions Operations job (which is a reminder for me of God's incredibly perfect timing!) It's a great book, I highly recommend it.

My years attending this conference as a student greatly impacted my relationship with God. Not only did I get to see other believers live out their faith, I got the chance to deepen mine. I learned about the sacrifice and perseverance it would take to walk with God for a lifetime.

Even though now, as Cru staff running the event behind the scenes, I see God doing the same things he did in my life in the lives of college students today.

Students today are passionate about living lives that matter. It's an incredible feeling to walk into a room of 1521 college students who are investing time in developing their relationship with God. These students are the future leaders of our cities, states and nation. They are future leaders in business, medicine and law. Investing in their spiritual life now will bring a great return on the investment.