May 18, 2012

Festivals of Speed

by Sus in Family News Tags: Bentley, BMW, Cadillac, Ferrari, Florida, Ford, Hudson, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Packard, Porsche, road trips, Rolls Royce, things to do, travel, Volkswagen, VW

We like to post tips so you know about different things to do in your travels. Recently, we discovered Festivals of Speed, which is held in four different locations in Florida. We learned about it through an offer to get in for half price with a Living Social coupon.

We drove up to the quiet town of Howey-in-the-Hills, where dozens of “exotic cars” were on display on the beautiful Mission Inn’s golf course. (We never did see Howey.)

May 10, 2012

Jenn at Campus für Christus

by Sus in CCC News, Family News, Jenn Tags: Germany, international, ministry, students, university

“Hi!  I don’t know how to get in.”

Jenn stood in the apartment house entry and buzzed the room.  She’d been invited to dinner near a different campus, the University of Freiburg.  The students hosting the dinner are involved with Campus für Christus and were expecting her, but assumed she was a German student.  When they heard her speaking English, they realized an American was coming to their event; Jenn became an instant novelty.

After a warm welcome, the hostesses treated Jenn and the other four guests to a great dinner of turkey, salad, and different spreads to put on bread slices.  Afterwards, the students met the other dinner groups for dessert downtown.  About fifty students from different campuses in Freiburg attended the event and Jenn enjoyed meeting lots of new people.

Jenn plans to return to the Thursday night meetings of Campus für Christus, the German student ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ, International.  (Campus für Christus has had a ministry in Germany since 1966.)

NOTE: Jenn’s tee-shirt was a handmade gift from a friend and says basically (in German), “I’m an English major, you do the math.”  She was attending a May Day picnic (a typical activity for this German holiday) when the picture was taken.

May 7, 2012

Multiplying My Blogging Ministry

by Sus in Our Ministry, Our Newsletters Tags: blogging, ministry

"Thanks, as always, for your time and commitment to helping others. You are doing that!" ~ Andrea Buczynski, CCC VP, Global LDHR

“You’ve multiplied yourself,” Andrea said.  She was telling me about another staff member, Bob, who began blogging after I had helped Andrea start her blog two weeks before; she then encouraged Bob to consider writing about his leadership tips (see Bob’s blog, Leading with Questions).

Those words struck a chord in me.   In 2009, I began working in Judy Douglass’ office to help women use technology for ministry.  One of my motivations has been to “multiply” myself.  That is, I wanted to help others to learn technology so they could use these tools in ministry.  Since then, I’ve had the privilege of offering training in a variety of new skills to many of our Campus Crusade for Christ staff.

Andrea Buczynski, Campus Crusade’s Vice President for Global Leadership Development, is one of these. (She’s also a Penn State alum, by the way.)  Andrea explained the focus of her work to me as “developing effective leaders who are growing people and building healthy teams.”  In 2010, the Leadership Development and Human Resources office trained 195 teams globally under her leadership.

She had been considering how to minister more effectively and asked me to meet with her.  In our first meeting, she decided that a blog would be one of the tools she’d like to use, so she started AB Reflections.  I also explained how she should link her blog to her Facebook and Twitter accounts.  She wasn’t using Twitter very often, so I explained about a tool called Hootsuite to help her manage the time she would spend on social networks.

When I met with her again last week, she was very enthusiastic about “blogging and tweeting.”  In just the first two months of the blog, she’s had over 2,300 page views from people in 47 countries.  Her statistics indicate she’s reaching between 1,300 to 1,500 people. These are very good numbers for a brand new blog. She was also invited to an “invitation only” leadership group on Twitter and was asked to write a monthly blog post for this group of 9,000 people.  We both agreed that God was helping her reach more people through these internet tools… and in a very short time.

You might enjoy following Andrea’s blog, AB Reflections. She writes about Jesus, living life, and leadership.