LARGE

This year we are moving our focus of ministry from a weekly meeting format where we attempt to begin as many Bible studies as possible, and emphasize a big weekly meeting, to a format where we emphasize less Bible studies in hope that they would be larger communities where students can come and find growth in Christ, and a large tight knit community.
Last night was our first night to see how this happens. Autumn and I are leading a group, which we call Large Groups, our other staff is leading a group, and we have 4 sophomore students taking on a group themselves. We spent the last week putting on events around campus where we can meet people, specifically freshmen. As we did these events we were getting phone numbers, and sitting down one on one with them to get to know them and to share the Gospel. We were hoping that all these people would come and check out a Large Group.
We are so thrilled this morning to see how God provided for us. Our Large Group had 28 people, which was a blast! We had a great time meeting some new people, and seeing alot that we had previously met. Our student lead Large Group had 32 people show up, and our other staff lead group, which meets off campus and targets Greeks and athletes had 12! Each group studied what a committment to Christ looks like from Luke 9:58=61.
We pray that each students felt welcome in involved, and that we would do a good job not only pursuing them spiritually but socially. We pray that they would come back next week, bring a friend, and dive in deep in the community on Large Group!

OLSP

We spent this summer serving the Lord in Branson, MO on Ozark Lake Summer Project. This is a classic staple for our region for Campus Crusade. We have been on this project once before two years ago and absolutely loved it. As staff it’s a great time to connect with other staff from our region, and also to get extensive time investing in the lives of college students.

Vince and Autumn with the SFA students on OLSP

There was however once major difference for us this time around. Over the past 2 years there have been only 2 men Project Directors and in the past decade there has been 1 woman who has been the Assistant Project Director. These people are staff that we look up to and tend to put on the Cru pedestal. This year signaled a change. There was a new PD whom we think highly of, and there is a new APD whom I (Vince) am married to. Autumn had a large task that she undertook this past 6 months and might I say, I think she nailed it. She did a great job balancing being on campus and planning summer project. She did an even better job this summer leading, teaching, and sheparding the staff and students of this project.

We love this project because it gives us a chance to train students  how to have a ministry in a simulated real life scenario. This summer we had 32 students from different schools such as LSU, Texas Tech, UT, OSU, SFA, UTA, Tx St. They all lived with the staff in the Honeysuckle Inn in Branson. We got each student a local job at places like Mcdonalds, Silver Dollar City, Branson Belle Showboat, and the YMCA. Their jobs weren’t just a place to work, but it was their ministry place. Our job as staff was to train and equip these students on how to share their faith, share their testimony, how to invest in the lives of people so that they would reach their fellow employee’s, and eventually their campus, and then the rest of their life.

It was amazing to see the Lord empower our students with the Holy Spirit as they shared their faith boldly not only with their co-workers, but the people of branson. The students stepped up into leadership positions as the staff left in early July, to lead the “Project” in various area’s of ministry. Some lead their small groups, men’s/womens times, outreach, and weekly meeting. The Lord used them in mighty ways, and we believe that not only were lives of people in Branson changed, but the lives of our students were as well.

When Students Get It

I have been meeting weekly to disciple an awesome freshman girl during the fall, and now the spring. Last fall we studied foundations of the faith, and she really took to knowing why she believes what she believes. Last Friday, she took a big faith step and came to our Friday outreach times. During this time, staff and students spread out over campus to get into spiritual conversations with students to share about who Christ is, and what He wants to do in their life. She was really nervous, because this is the first time she had ever gone to share her faith before. She and I and her friend sat and prayed for a few minutes. Then I took them through a brief training on how to use the Soularium survey, and the Gospel, and then we were off to find students to share with.


We came across a group of 3 girls sitting and having lunch, and began to have a conversation with them, and to do the survey. We realized that each of the 3 women we were talking to had different spiritual backgrounds, and they were interested in hearing more. Though they were short on time, we were able to share the gospel with them, and the two girls who had never shared their faith before were incredibly encouraged. They said over and over how cool the conversation was, and how they can't wait until next week to go again and talk with more students about Christ.
Fast forward the weekend, I met with the girl again yesterday, and I wanted to take her through a more thorough training for how to share the gospel. We sat and went through the Knowing God Personally booklet and talked about it together, and talked through possible topics that could come up when she would talk with people who don't know Christ. At the end of our conversation, I challenged her to practice with a friend and she was excited but nervous.
Her prayer request for the end of our time together was for boldness to proclaim Christ. And not because she is a Christian and it is something she is "supposed" to do, but because she truly deeply loves people, and wants them to know who Christ is. Her heart had been stirred for the same reason God wants people to know Christ- love. Please pray with me for her that she will grow in boldness to share Christ with others, and that her motivation would always remain love for God and love for those around her.
Thanks for your prayers.

Feeding the Children at Winter Conference

In Ethiopia right now there is a severe famine that is occuring. Due to climate changes and centuries of harvesting thier land, there is now no longer an easy way for ethiopians to raise a harvest and provide food for thier already poor country. Children and adults are dying daily of starvation. But worse yet, these people who are starving physically are also starving spiritually. Most people in Ethiopia are Muslim or Coptic Orthodox, which in short is messed up, or they are nothing.
There is an organization called Feeding the Children. Feeding the Children has recognized these needs and developed a way to get packaged food that contain nutrients to these people, where all the have to do is boil water, which is something readily available and possible for them. The campuses in our region partnered with them to help feed these people physically in order to open a door that they may never hunger again spiritually. Together through different events on campus, our region raised over $19,000 for this cause. What that means is this. $10 buys 40 meals. I may have failed math more than once, but i calculate that to 76,000 mealsish. And i want to elaborate on what is being done here. I think its great to feed the hungry. But to be blunt, what good is it to feed a hungry person, or to house a homeless, or in some way to meet a physical need of some one who is seperate from Christ, with out sharing with them how they can have a personal saving relationship with God through Jesus. In essense if all we did was give the people the meals, we'd be enabling less hungry people to spend eternity seperate from God. The good folks at Feeding the Children and enabling us to get these meals first to the staff and believers in Ethiopia, so that they can then go the then hungry and see that they are fed meals and nutrition, then also allowing that to open the door to share with them on how they may never hunger or thirst again, by gaining eternal life in Christ. Not that these people won't struggle with food but that they have something that satisfies thier soul.

Winter Conference stories cont.

Every year at Winter Conference a large chunk of time is set aside for evangelism. Our goal is two fold as staff. 1, we obviously are passionate about sharing the Gospel so we are hoping to give people in the DFW area an opportunity to respond to Christ. 2, we are aware that there is a low chance that the people we talk to, we will never see again, so our hope also is that our students will be faced with an opportunity to share thier faith. We hope that it will grow them in confidence, and that they would be trained on how to lead someone to Christ, so that when they go back to campus they are likely to be more bold in thier ministry.
Each year's evangelism seems to be a little different. Some times we just appoach people in a park with a survey about spiritual things, sometimes we serve at a local soup kitchen meeting peoples physical need so that we may meet thier spiritual. We have gon to neighborhoods, malls, in many different locations with the goal of entering into a spiritual conversation with someone so that they would know that God wants a relationship with them through Jesus.
They year we got very creative. One of our strategies this year was a Flash Mob. You know what this is....You're in a random public place, music starts playing and suddenly a "mob" of people begin dancing, then after the song is over all the people dissappear into the crowd. Well that doesn't make much sense for evangelism??? Basically what we did was when the flash mob dance ended, instead of dissappearing, we used the attention gained for our benefit. It was such a great God inspired idea.
Our campus and a few others went to the Ticket City Bowl game at the Cotton Bowl, which was Penn St v U of Houston. So when the game let out there was hundreds of people exiting the main gate, then BOOM the music starts and a 7 or 9 random people are dancing and a small crowd notices, about 30 sec later about 40 people rush the scene and get in on the dance, then 30 sec later there are almost 80 college students flash mobbing. There are hundreds and hundreds of people watching, i'm bad with numbers but i'm going with like 350. So, dance goes on, the song ends and then an even more beautiful scene. The college students immediatly begin to initiate conversations with individuals in the crowd asking what the thought of the flash mob and asking them to take a survey about fanhood and life in which our students we be able to easily transition in a spiritual conversation where they could share the Gospel. It was awesome.
They were able to flash mob two of three time bc the crowd was so big. Yeah, there were alot of no's and alot of people who could care less. But, the Gospel was shared! I went with one of our freshmen guys, and i completely turned the reigns over to him and gave him the lead. He was a little nervous at first, but he ended up stepping out in faith under the power of the Holy Spirit and shared his faith for the first and second time ever that day! God is so big that He can use something as silly as a flashmob, and unreliable and an under experienced nervous freshman in college to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to people!

Winter Conference Stories

We love Winter Conference so much. If you are new to our ministry, Winter Conference is our annual conference for Cru students in our region (tx, ok, ar, la) which begins on New Years Day. We wrote more about it in our most recent prayer letter.
The thing we love the most about the conference is that for whatever reason God chooses to use the conference to change lives. When we were students God used this conference to confirm in our lives his leading us to staff with Cru. I have learned countless Biblical principles, and have cultivated a heart for the world at Winter Conference.
This year we were excited for our students because they are a relativly young bunch who have never been before. The first night of the conference was excellent. The main speaker, Darryl Smith spoke on the Gospel. He shared that in our world we are taught that we have to earn things. Ex. If we work hard we get promoted. If we are nice and likable, then we are socially accepted. We gain entitlement for things we feel we deserve to have such as health, comfort, money, friend etc. But, this is the complete opposite of how our God views us. Darryl spoke on the fact that we are humans are sinful and because of the sin no matter how big or small, we are seperated from God. But God loves us, in fact He loves us so much that He sent Jesus Christ to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins, that ALL we have to do is place our faith in Christ, and in surrendering our lives to Him, we then gain eternal life.
The world tells us we have to be good to earn God's favor. God tells us that the path to hell is paved with good intentions and that He has given us access to Him freely through His loving Grace. The students were challenged with this idea, and we later learned that 6 students placed thier faith in Christ that night.
This encouraged one of our students to immediatly after the meeting, get on the phone with a close family and share the Gospel with him. Many of our students spoke about how they feel like they had been trying to earn God's love, but now realize that God loves them simply because they are His creations, and that they are in Christ. This is life changing stuff.