Our year ended on a strong note. In November, 20 writers and editors gathered near Nashville as Anne Marie and I led a day-long training.

The training, sponsored by the Evangelical Press Association, brought members of five Christian organizations together for the event. This was our fifth major training event or class series this year — two for Cru writers and three for others. It’s a privilege to help our Cru coworkers and other Christians based on the 30-plus years we’ve spent writing, editing, teaching and doing a wide variety of publishing work.

Mark’s work, leading the team of nine writers and editors who produce Cru Storylines and who help several Cru ministries gather stories, is unchanged. He’s responsible for that team’s ongoing training and he assigns stories to the writers and tracks their progress.

Meanwhile, Anne Marie’s job is in transition. Starting in 2019, she’ll be part of the International School Project, a branch of Cru. They equip public school teachers around the world to teach ethics and morality based on lessons from the JESUS film, showing students how they can make better choices.

Some teachers then become leaders, helping other teachers, thus helping even more students and even their whole communities. So far, 3,000 volunteers have trained more than 100,000 teachers.

We’ve trained several ISP writers, and Anne Marie has mentored two of their writers over that last few years. She even traveled to Taiwan with ISP a few years ago.

She plans to travel with ISP teams on their mission trips. She’ll help train teachers and also report about teacher movements in each country. She’s also been asked to travel apart from mission trips to gather reports.

Your gifts to us throughout the year help us continue to share stories of how God is at work around the world and to help others do the same. We’re grateful for your friendship and commitment.

– Mark, for the Winzes

P.S. In light of travel costs associated with Anne Marie’s new role, would you be willing to send an end-of-the-year gift? If so, you can give online at give.cru.org/0262910.