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.

Would Jesus Eat Frybread?

So much happens each month, that there's no way I can cram it all into my monthly newsletter! Last month a couple of my teammates traveled out to Toppenish, Washington for an annual Nations conference called "Would Jesus Eat Fry Bread?"

Nations is a movement of Cru for Native American college students, one of Cru's many contextualized ministries (more about this later). The ministry exists to honor Native American students and faculty by restoring their lives and culture with Jesus Christ.

The "Would Jesus Eat Frybread?" conference is a chance for Native students from around the US to gather together to learn from each other. Similar to TCX (our regional Christmas Conference), students hear from speakers, worship with each other, and have a chance to get to know other Christians who are also Native.

The conference is a partnership between Cru, Intervarsity (another college ministry), and the Calvin Institute of Worship. Over 175 people attended, representing more than 55 tribes from places like North Carolina, New Mexico, South Dakota, Hawaii and Alaska.

For many students, this was the first chance they've had to talk about their questions regarding their identity as Native Americans and Christ-followers- Am I native enough? Can I be a native and a Christian?

I mentioned the word "contextualization" - this is the process of making the gospel accessible within a particular cultural context in an understandable and culturally meaningful way without losing the truth and integrity of the message.

For our Nations movement, this means providing worship using Native drums and languages. This means getting the blessing of a tribe and it's elders before hosting an event (hence my trip out to Washington earlier this year, months before the conference began). Last year, students at the conference took communion using frybread and grape soda, staples in native culture. Instead of staying at a hotel and meeting in a conference room, the gathering was held on the reservation with chairs set up in a circle.

The point of contextualization is to put the gospel in a more understandable, culturally relevant form by using elements of a people's language, customs and traditions. The message of the gospel, that redemption and salvation are possible through Christ, does not change. The method of presenting and transferring the gospel is dependent on the culture.

The website "Reaching Internationals" clarifies this concept with a great list of what contextualization is not:

• It is not a watering down or compromising of the gospel.
• It is not assimilating one culture into another.
• It is not segregation. It is not separate but equal. The goal of contextualization is communication. Contextualization may result in more separation but only to the degree that is necessary to produce truly indigenous leaders and movements.
• It does not mean each culture only reaches its own (whites/whites; blacks/blacks, etc).
• It is not going after corporate ‘diversity’ as an end in itself.

It was a privilege to be a small part of this conference. Due to my other travels this fall I stayed back in Minneapolis and did not attend, but I was able to assist in some of the travel arrangements for participants, booking more than 50 flights for students across the US.

(Next year, the conference will be held in Northern Minnesota on the Fond du Lac Reservation so I'm hoping to attend in person).

Expedition.

This year, Cru sent out 2 teams of interns on European missionary endeavors. The teams are called "Expedition" Stint Teams and spend one month in a different city, for a whole year. Here's a brief update from their time in Rovno, Ukraine earlier this fall:

"While one of the teams was in Rovno, Ukraine, a local pastor saw how the students were challenged with the gospel and how well they responded. Taras, the pastor, shared, "It should not have taken a team of Americans to motivate us to do the work that we should have already been doing ourselves, but it did. Thanks to this group of Americans, we (in our church) will now be taking the Gospel to students." 

As with any short-term missionary endeavor, it can be easy to question effectiveness. Our Expedition teams are no different, as they spend only 1 month in each location. But the above story is an example of lasting fruit left behind after our team moves on.

We seek to be what Jim Elliot prayed to be many decades ago:

“Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road;
Make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another
on facing Christ in me.”                   - Jim Elliott

A line on a page.

This fall I took a Church History class online. On almost a weekly basis I was astounded at how little I knew about the history of Christ followers. It was fascinating to learn more about whole centuries of history, and people who sacrificed so much to make the name of Christ known.

Our textbook for the class was 500 pages (no, I didn't actually get all of it read) and it covered pretty much the entire 2,000 years of Church History.

I happened to be paging through the last chapter one day, when a familiar phrase jumped out at me: Campus Crusade! We showed up in the textbook on page 499, in reference to Pope John Paul II, who attended a Cru retreat as a young man in Poland (here is a very interesting article about his interactions with Cru).

After reading the textbook, listening to hours and hours of lectures, and memorizing dozens of names of important people from church history, I was surprised to see Cru get even one line on the second to last page of my text book.

There have been so many instrumental people, churches, groups and movements throughout the last 2,000 years. Seeing Cru near the end of the book really put into perspective how small the organization is in relation to everything else that's happened in history. It's easy to assume Cru is the end-all-be-all when you immersed in Cru culture - even though that is certainly not true.

Seeing Cru in the textbook also gave me a new perspective on seeing how far we have come as a greater church body, and how close we really could be to seeing the Great Commission fulfilled.