Fear Factor Outreach
As Halloween approached this year, our team of Cru volunteers at the local middle school sponsored a Fear Factor Outreach complete with food, fun, and games to make any middle-school student squirm and scream! Several kids who attend Cru handed out spider rings and posted signs around school that dared students, “Come Take on the Fear Factor Challenge!” We also were looking for a high school or college student who could share a story at the outreach about overcoming fear. After weeks of searching, we came up empty. Then, as I (Sue) was driving our kids to an appointment one day, I asked them if they knew of anyone they would consider brave. When I told them why I was asking, I was shocked when Mandi replied, ”Well, I’d like to share a story about how God helped me overcome some fear!” When I asked her to tell me more, she had a very clear sense of what she wanted to share and a strong desire to tell her peers how they could begin a relationship with God too. A week later, she stood before about fifty of her peers who came to the event and told them about how God’s perfect love helped her overcome a specific fear in her life. After sharing the gospel with them, four students prayed with her to receive Christ into their own lives! It was so exciting. Since then, many of the other students who are already believers have said that they would like to share a story of what God has done for them as well. (Some of them will get their wish in a few weeks at our next outreach around Christmas time!) Others have said they want to help plan the games for next time. Please pray for these young people as they step out in faith to reach their friends with the love of Christ!
(Left) Twenty-one leaders from twelve countries!
(right) Mandi leads her classmates in prayer.
Africa Training Update
You may recall that in October, Tim traveled with the Global Missions team to Nairobi, Kenya! They were excited to bring with them a new tool called The Global Start booklet. It contains basic ministry principles that anyone can use to start a ministry to high school students. Twenty-one leaders from all over Africa were excited to take this new tool back to their country. Since then, Jules, a leader from DR Congo, has joined forces with Sami, a leader in digital strategies from Ethiopia, to translate the booklet into French for his ministry! Sami also has a vision to turn the booklet into a phone app. Others, like Philip in Cameroon, have already begun to use it to train students and volunteers since he returned home. But the African leaders weren’t the only ones whose lives were impacted by the forum. Seeing the African leaders’ passion for the Lord lived out humbly in prayer, worship and fasting left a deep impression on Tim. By the end of their time, he told them, “I know we came here to train you, but I really feel like I learned so much more from you.”