the results are in!

These numbers include all Cru summer projects, both stateside and overseas...so fun that we got to be part of seeing so many lives changed!

4000 (!!!) men and women received Christ through PERSONAL gospel conversations on summer projects around the world! 

Over 7000 men and women received Christ because of hearing the gospel through a GROUP presentation!!

"Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" John 1:12

As I write, Matt is at a root beer kegger that Cru is sponsoring for students tonight to build community and to have some fun together. I'm home (because Maggie is sleeping!) but I have a stack of surveys from international students next to me. We're having a Cru tailgate tomorrow for MSU's first home football game and thought it'd be fun to introduce internationals to 'tailgating' :) I'm going to email them right after I finish this post. I'm pretty sure at least a few are coming so far!

This has been another fun week....our team leader, Jake, shared the gospel clearly during his talk at Cru on Tuesday and invited students to put a check mark on their contact cards if they trusted Christ. Four girls indicated that they had!  I get to meet with two of them on Tuesday. I'm excited to hear more about their decision and to help them get more connected with Cru so they can keep growing in their walks with Jesus. If you think to pray for them, their names are Halley, Shannon, Anna, and Gianna.  Thank you for your prayers! God is moving here around Mankato!

Over Labor Day weekend we had the chance to travel to visit Matt's family in Alexandria. The lake was starting to get cold, but our adventurous daughter loved it anyway! She also took her first step over the weekend! Our world might be changing soon....! Here are some pics...

wow!

Reconnecting with girls in my Bible study at the first Cru
meeting. L-R: me, Laura, Eddye, and Tyler

Our family tradition is to have 'celebration breakfast' every Friday morning and celebrate the things we've seen God do throughout the week.  We had a lot to talk about this morning! The first week of classes is coming to a close as students head out of town for Labor day weekend, but it was a great week!  We had our first Cru weekly meeting on Tuesday night and had over 100 students show up. It was fun to meet some new freshmen there as well as reconnecting with students from last year.

One of my favorite things this week was following up surveys that we did the first two nights of school during dinner. Students indicated if they were interested in hearing more about Cru or learning about how to know God personally. We stop by their dorms to chat with them and answer questions. The first girl I talked to was Babie. I was with my friend, Brenda, who will be leading a Bible study in the dorms. Babie had marked that she was interested in Cru and in how to know God personally.  We chatted for a bit and then shared with her how she could come into a personal relationship with God. As we got done sharing, we asked if that was something she wanted in her life and it was clear that God had been working in her already, preparing her to enter into relationship with Him.  Brenda and I had the privilege of praying with Babie to come to know Jesus!  What a sweet moment.  God was so gracious to let us be part of that!  Please pray for Babie as she begins her journey with the Lord.

more updates to come.....!

Home Sweet Home

We got back into Minnesota from summer project just a week and a half ago and promptly closed on our new home and moved in. Our last few weeks were full of travel, packing, moving, cleaning, painting, and unpacking. Whew! Its been fun to settle into our new home and to dream about the potential it has. We're located just a few blocks from campus and we have a couple good spaces to invite students into our home and to host Cru events. I (Kristin) am excited to be so close to campus so I can potentially meet with women in our home during Maggie's naps and so we can easily walk or bike to work. We've already gotten to meet a few of our new neighbors and Maggie has managed to explore almost every inch of the main floor of our house - she'd love to give the stairs a try but we're going to hold her off on that for now! Thanks for all your prayers that we would find a good living situation for our family. It seems the Lord has provided a home that's a good fit for us and that will hopefully increase our ministry potential as well!

I also wanted to throw in a few pictures from summer project. Our internet connection wasn't very good in North Myrtle, so I had to hold off on them. Maggie grew A LOT during our time there and started standing and crawling....and learned about the joys of tide pools and eating sand ;)

Pre-sand...loving the beach!

Reaction to eating sand...silly girl!

Maggie and I with the girls in the Bible study that I co-led this summer

Killing the Giants

We've been on summer project at North Myrtle Beach for 3 weeks now. Each week has a theme of sorts and this week its 'Killing the Giants'. From the story of David and Goliath, students were challenged to come up with 5 'giants' in their lives to 'kill' this week. Some prayerfully set goals to talk with family members or friends who don't know Christ. Others set less tangible goals - trying to overcome spiritual hurdles that are keeping them from knowing God more.  Everyone set numeric goals of how many spiritual conversations they hope to initiate this week as well as how many times they are trusting God for the opportunity to share the gospel. As a project, our goal is 1497 spiritual conversations and 702 opportunities to share the gospel this week alone. A big goal....but a good one!

We challenged students to consider what it would look like if they poured their lives out for the sake of the gospel for a week and to have this be that week. Matt and I have enjoyed the challenge of taking on this mindset as well. We've each spent many hours this week on the beach with students we're working with and with other staff initiating conversations. Just today we each got to talk with people who God had clearly been preparing to hear the message of the gospel clearly. I shared with Sara, who was in a serious car accident in January and just started going to church 2 months ago. As we talked through what it means to know Christ, she admitted that she doesn't have Christ in her life. She didn't trust Christ on the spot, but I feel confident that she will in coming weeks.

Matt shared with a man named Tony, who'd recently experienced some personal hardship as well and was encouraged to hear the message of the gospel clearly. On North Myrtle Beach, Matt had the privilege of praying with Tony to receive Christ!  As I write, its 9:49 pm and Matt just headed out with some guys to continue 'killing giants' and bringing the good news of the gospel to the students who are out partying all around us.

Our project has talked with so many people with such deep desire to know God...its such a joy to be in this place to intersect their lives as the Lord leads us.  Please pray for us for strength and energy and discernment from the Spirit as we trust God for a big goal this week.  Our founder, Bill Bright, defined successful evangelism as "taking the initiative to share the gospel, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results up to God". We're planting seeds to the glory of God and trusting Him to water them! Our desire is to share hope and see life change.

Whirlwind

'uffda' is how I could describe my past month. I (Kristin) have been taking a class online called 'Trinitarianism' to continue my theological and biblical training. There are 8 core classes that Cru requires staff to take within your first 10 years on staff. As I wrap up this class next week, I'll have finished 5 of them! Taking a master's level class, being a mom, and spending around 10 hours per week on campus plus another 10-12 with the team and prepping stuff for campus has kept me a little busier than I'd aspired to be!

I've appreciated the knowledge I've gained through the class and ways I feel I know the Lord more deeply now than when I started. I love seeing the interactions of the persons of the Trinity and how great it is that that is modeled for us, that we might have such selfless interactions with others...its deep stuff and fascinating to dig into.

Things have also ended well on campus - I hope to post more details on that as there are some fun stories involved! Today, however, we're heading to Alexandria, MN for our annual 'MayDaze' conference. This is our regional staff conference for the Upper Midwest region. We'll spend the next 3 days hearing updates on ministry from around the region, catching up with friends who serve in different locations, and taking a chance to breathe a bit now that we're done on campus until fall. A week from today, our little Jetta will be packed to capacity and we'll start the drive to North Myrtle Beach summer project, our summer assignment.  More on that to come!

Until then, enjoy the beautiful spring weather!