As you know from our previous letter, we were just on the campus of Colorado State University for our National Staff conference. 4,819 Cru staff (and 2,082 kids) attended from at least 49 countries. Thank you for praying for us. We had many opportunities to talk with staff and help them, especially with blogging and social media needs. We’re also grateful for those of you who helped financially. We saw enough funds come in for our expenses, including enough for the matching amounts. We thank God for His faithfulness and for you!

Encouragement for You

Many of our speakers were excellent, touching on a variety of topics. Much of the content at our conference was about how to work more closely with others to further God’s kingdom. We have links to a few of the talks that we thought you might be particularly interested in.

Jenny Yang, of World Relief, helped our understanding, giving us a history of refugees and immigration and also sharing a biblical perspective. (Watch at bit.ly/Cru17Yang.) She encouraged us to care about the individuals impacted by these issues. The above World Relief graphic illustrates (by colors and circle sizes) that many of the immigrants to the U.S. are coming from countries where being a Christian is difficult and often where we cannot even send missionaries. The church has an incredible opportunity to reach these people right within our own neighborhoods.

Cru’s president, Dr. Steve Douglass, gave an encouraging report on how God is working through partnerships around the world. For example, using artificial intelligence to accelerate Bible translation, experts predict we’ll be able to share the Gospel in any of the world’s 7,000 languages before 2033. You’ll enjoy his many inspiring stories at bit.ly/Cru17Douglass.

One of our Russian staff, Lena Fetisova, grew up in the Soviet Union, spending half her life without any knowledge of God. When she was a student, some of our American students traveled to Russia and shared Christ with her.

Hear her story (bit.ly/Cru17Lena) and listen to her talk on believing God’s Word and having a mustard-seed faith. Lena reminded us that our confidence is in God… in Who He is and in what He will do. It’s not in our successes, our goals or what we see or don’t see.

You’ll remember from our last prayer letter that one of our speakers for the bloggers event Sus hosted was Dr. Heather Holleman, who is involved in our Faculty Commons ministry at Penn State. If you’d also like to improve your writing skills, you may be interested in her great tips to our writers. Find the video we taped of her at bit.ly/WritingWithFlair.

We’re encouraged about the possibility of fulfilling the Great Commission in our lifetime. Our prayer is that these messages will encourage you, as well, as you hear how God is building His kingdom today.

Reaching the World with You

Thank you for coming alongside us to help our Cru staff members minister everyday around the world to those who are without Christ. You share in the blessing of working with these godly Cru missionary staff and in rejoicing over what God is doing in people’s hearts and lives.