THE SLAMERS

We were in our van making the long drive down Interstate 5 from Sacramento to our home in SoCal, after a New Year celebration with Becky’s family.   Becky was reading a biography of Cameron Townsend (founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators) out loud to the kids.  Cam’s heart would break for the thousands of people groups that had yet to have the Bible in their own language!  How would they come to know the God who made and loved them?  Who would tell them?

Our hearts resonate with Cam as we think about the throngs of college students about to enter adult life and a career, without knowing the love and grace of God in Jesus.  But we thank God for the life He is bringing to thousands across our small corner of the world! 

Just last weekend, the Cru staff in the Pacific Southwest hosted Cru’s Winter Conference LA.  Over 1,000 college students from 69 different campuses attended!  They came out to hear pastors and speakers share from God’s word, worship together, outreach to the local area, and enjoy peer community.

Students entering the ballroom to be challenged from God’s word

“Auntie Anne” Beiler, of Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, sharing her story of confession and faith

Becky hosted a fantastic Cru Moms gathering for our staff moms.  Scott connected with a bunch of students interested in using their gifts to mobilize missionaries with Cru, as a career.

We can’t wait to see how God works in the lives of these men and women as they continue in college or walk into their careers with Christ at the helm of their lives!

Praise & Prayer Requests

• Praise God!! Sarah’s cardiologist says her leaky heart valve is almost completely healed!!  Please pray for total healing.
• Praise God Scott has been able to confirm summer assignments for 90% of our Cru staff!
• Pray for Scott as he seeks out a male leader for our Santa Monica Summer Mission.
• Praise God for providing all we need for Sarah’s braces!
• Praise God for 40 of our Cru staff moms being able to connect & encourage each other to press on!
• Pray for several students, interns, and Cru staff considering joining our LD team!  We need more laborers to care for our 250+ missionaries!

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray…”

Matt. 9:37-38

Thank You!

  We are so thankful for your heart to invest in seeing college students’ lives changed for eternity!  It is because of you that we can continue to be a part of what God is doing together!

I (Scott) had taken a short break in the midst of Winter Conference, to just sit and read God’s word.  I found a secluded spot in the hotel lobby and began to read.  After about ten or fifteen minutes, I heard someone say,

“Hey Scott!”

I looked up.

It was Marissa.  She had been a student on the summer mission we led in Santa Monica a couple of years ago.

After a little chit chat about conference and her last year in college, she began to share some encouraging news.  Turns out most of the students from Santa Monica 2015 were still connecting regularly with each other, even though they’re spread out over a dozen states!

They started a group text called GroupMe during the summer mission and continue to use it today to stay connected.  At least three hotel rooms at Winter Conference were filled exclusively with students from that summer mission.  And Marissa estimated that between 50% and 75% of all the students on the summer mission want to intern or stint with Cru in the coming years!

Wow!  So fun to see how the Lord continues to produce fruit in the lives of those 75 men and women almost two years after their summer mission experience!  Thanks for being a part of it with us!

SaMoSuMi15

Saturday afternoon at our Crossroads student conference, I(Scott) stood at the door of our STINT (Short-term International) seminar welcoming students and helping them make sure they were in the right place. A tall, dark-haired young man with a soccer jersey on and a backpack, sauntered up to the doorway and looked at me with a smile.
“Hey, I remember you! We had a conversation at the last conference.”
“Hi!” I returned. “Oh, yeah?” A little embarrassed I couldn’t immediately place him.
“You used to be an engineer, right?” he continued. “I’m an engineering student and you shared your story.” He knew too much. We’d obviously had a conversation. I observed his name tag at this point and his name was familiar to me. Matt M—–. This guy must have gone on Summer Mission with us? So it must have been at our Radiate conference last January, when I co-led a seminar on Summer Missions for the students.
“Oh! Was it at the Radiate Conference when we gave the summer missions seminar?”
“Yeah, that was it! I ended up helping lead the summer mission to Whitestone last summer!” All the pieces finally came together! Whitestone is one of our summer missions in the Middle East. That’s where I’d seen his name! Matt ended up going and helping to lead last minute.
“Yes, I remember you! Wow! That’s so cool!”
Matt was entering that seminar considering taking a year after graduation, to serve with Cru reaching college students in the Middle East for an entire year! Who knew how god would use a simple conversation, and a simple story like mine, in the life of a young college student!

How do you move from having a passion to serve the Lord, to living it out as a missionary?  Where are the opportunities?  How do I apply?  Will I get trained?  How do I get funded?  Will I fit in on my team?

Or how does a missionary continue to grow and thrive after 10, 20, or 40 years in the field?  How does she stay engaged with her calling through the seasons of motherhood?  Where does he find help during the seasons of conflict, or desolation?  How do we finish well?

The answer to these questions with Cru, in large part, is found in the calling of the Leadership Development and Human Resources team.  Recruiting, evaluating, coaching, training, strategy, structure, opportunities, development, and care.

We love this team!  Already this Fall, we’ve been involved with evaluating new Cru staff members, choosing next summer’s mission leaders, planning a conference for our Moms leadership team, navigating a part-time seminary request, and working on a crisis protocol for our missionaries.

And God is producing fruit as we mobilize these missionaries.  During the first week of classes, Sandra, a student leader at UC Riverside, was calling back students who had filled out survey cards and set up a meeting with three freshmen. After getting to know each other, Sandra shared the Gospel message. Two of the students, Esmerelda and Madison, prayed to receive Christ!  Madison expressed that she was “ready to make God my own thing, not just my parents’ thing.”

Thanks for partnering with us in these very crucial components of mobilizing 250 missionaries to reach college students in the Pacific Southwest, and our partnerships around the world!  We love doing so together with you!

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”  John 21:16

Prayer Requests!

• Pray for Becky as she leads the care of our moms throughout the region.  Especially as her team plans now for their efforts this year.
• Pray for Scott as he challenges some of our Cru staff to lead summer missions in 2017.  Those challenges begin now!
• Pray for our staff conference Nov. 16 & 17.  For the care and connection of all our missionary staff.
• Pray for our Crossroads Conf Nov. 18-20.  For hundreds of Junior and Senior students to attend and learn to make Godly decisions with their careers.

This summer is the 50th Anniversary of Cru’s oldest summer mission in Ocean City, NJ.

When Bill Bright (founder of Cru) was asked by the pastor of Ocean City Baptist Church to come and visit their little island on the Jersey shore, he didn’t take much notice.  But with the constant invitation of their pastor, Bill finally gave in.  What he was shown by that pastor, changed his mind.  Thousands of lost college students flooding the boardwalk on summer vacation.  The pastor pleaded with Bill Bright to bring his staff to their boardwalk and beach to share Jesus with them.  And he did, beginning the very next summer.  

Since then, Cru has not ceased to have a summer mission on that shore, hosted by that same church.  Annually, the Ocean City Summer Mission is led by 35 staff and attended by just over 100 students from around the country.  Last year 102 people received Christ as a result of the outreach of the summer mission!  

Ocean City  Summer Mission has become known for it’s incredible ministry training and continues to be a favorite.  It was on that summer mission in 1998, as an attending student, that God called Scott into full-time ministry.  As  Staff,  we have spent 3 other summers on this mission. Now Scott has the privilege to help put together the leadership of that summer mission each year.

Praise God for the fruit He has produced through the Ocean City Summer Mission over the last 50 years!

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last… “   

John 15:16a

Prayer Requests!

• Pray for the people who have heard the gospel over the years through all our summer missions, that those seeds would continue to grow!

• Pray for students involved with Cru throughout the year, to stay rooted in Christ during the summer, and return to fellowship on campus in the Fall.

Thank You!

We are so thankful for your heart to invest in seeing college students’ lives changed for eternity!  It is because of you that we can continue to be a part of what God is doing together!

All academic year-long, Scott works to put together summer missions.  Confirming venues, putting leaders in place, and entire staff teams together.  This is the time of year when all that work comes to fruition!  We want to show you in pictures this month, what the Lord is beginning to do through some of these summer missions!

Over 220 college students are engaged in these summer missions, all over the world right now!  Thousands will hear the gospel through them.  These students will go back to their campuses and hometowns changed, because of the steps of faith they’ve taken this summer.                            

THANK YOU for partnering with us to see God change lives for eternity!

PRAY WITH US: 

• Students on summer mission to encounter God and takes steps of faith in evangelism.
• The kids finished another great year of homeschooling.  Pray for a refreshing summer!

“Bella trusts Jesus”

“Nini, Christine, Christina, and Mahaley accepted Christ:)”

“30-40 students at NorCal Epic Fall Retreat”

“200+ people at Welcome Week BBQ”

“Lane stepped out in faith to co-lead Greek Life”

“First RA [resident advisor] Bible study *3 years of prayer answered”

“Taught Nishi how to read the Bible”

“Decided to STINT”

“60+ students at Radiate”

“Decided to join staff”

“Freshmen learned how to share their faith for the first time”

“35+ people accept Christ”

“Bible study at Hancock”

“Turkish women attend women’s retreat and hear the gospel”

“Men’s Conference; Men learning to lead out of brokenness”

“Passed off Bible study to student leaders”

“Most of our disciples are Latinx/Chicanx freshmen”

“Epic Bible study starts at Chapman”

“7 students going on summer missions”

“8 students going to Puerto Rico this summer”

These are just some of the things our Interns said about what the Lord did in and through them this past academic year!

May 1st this year marked the end our our Spring Regional Conference. Coming to the end of the academic year, we hold our Spring Conference at the beginning of May to reconnect, share, and celebrate what God has accomplished all year long. 

One component of that time is our Intern Debrief.   Interns are almost 1/3 of the Cru staff in our region, and a segment of our staff that we invest a lot in through evaluation, training, and care.  The first night, those 60 Interns wrote on colorful sticky notes, many of the things God did in and through them throughout the year.  Month by month, they posted these notes on long ribbons of butcher paper on the walls around the room.  It became a confetti of praise to God!

Prayer Requests!

• Praise God with us for all He accomplished in and through the lives of these young Cru missionaries this year!
• Pray for these Interns as they move into their next season of life. Some will continue with Cru while others will move into many other vocations.
• Pray for us and all Cru missionaries as they move into their summer assignments. We’ve been given these 3 months to develop the necessary financial support for our ministry.

Thank You!
We couldn’t do this without you! We are so thankful for your heart to give, pray and invest in seeing students lives changed for eternity!

This is our most recent family pic at Scott’s cousin’s wedding.  Scott was privileged to officiate his wedding this month!

Awesome adventures and a new Christian community awaits at college. Find out how Cru College Bound helps high school seniors and their parents with this big change. http://bit.ly/21FMhNo