My mouth was dry and my heartbeat increased in anticipation and hope. For the first time in three years, I would be surprised to learn if Worldwide Challenge had won any awards from the Evangelical Press Association. After presenting the awards the last three years, I listened as my friend Paul announced the winners.

I gratefully accepted six awards on behalf of our team. We received three photo awards, one writing award and one design award, in addition to an award of merit for the magazine as a whole. Every member of our team had something to celebrate.

While the awards presentation was fun, other parts of my time at the EPA convention were more valuable. Every year that event helps me become a better magazine editor, team leader and communicator in general. Last year at the convention I heard about a ministry focused on helping orphans called Back2Back.

The current issue of Worldwide Challenge features a couple who are part of Back2Back and who adopted 34 children in India. You can read the whole story on our website at http://worldwidechallenge.org/content/out-fire.

While most of our stories focus on the work of Cru staff members, we also acknowledge the work of people who staff members influence. And Cru played a role in Back2Back’s start. Beth and Todd Guckenberger were part of Cru at Indiana University. Beth said, “I majored in Cru, which is not really a major, but I spent a whole lot more hours doing that than in any library.”

They went to Albania for a Spring Break mission trip. On the way home, they began talking about the plight of the orphans they had met. “Years later, with a picture of an Albanian orphan in our hands, we crossed the border into Mexico and began Back2Back Ministries,” Beth said. They now help with children’s homes in Mexico, Nigeria, India and Haiti.

We’re grateful to be part of an effort to take the gospel to people who need Christ, like these orphans. And we’re grateful you’re playing a significant role in our ministry. You’re part of putting the good news about what God is doing in India into people’s hands, and you deserve a piece of the awards our team won.

As you think of us this month, please pray for our communications planning, and that we will be able to find and tell great stories of God working around the world.

I stood on the ground, looking up in amazement; 40 feet up. After 25 years of marriage—our anniversary is this week—Anne Marie is still surprising me. She was walking on a pole over more open space than I wanted anything to do with. (That’s her in the red coat.)

We were at the Athletes in Action headquarters in Xenia, Ohio, to train 13 fellow Cru staff members and interns to be better writers. Less than a mile from our meeting room; past the soccer, football, softball and baseball fields; is a ropes course. Our host there pressed us to make that part of the week. I’m glad we gave in and did so.

Hesitantly we all set out, promising to give it at least a try. Anne Marie got farther than many of her trainees, and farther than me, and was one of the last to come down—by a swing from 25 feet up, no less—when the afternoon ended. She felt a great release in taking risks and succeeding.

The next day, back in the training room, we guided class members through more instructions. By the end of the day, each had written three items including one about the experience on the ropes course. The writing the students produced in just a few days encouraged us.

Some of them work on magazines and web sites, some write devotionals, some plan to write books and three have books completed. Now they know more about gathering material before writing and how to sort and organize the material after they gather it. Their writing will be stronger, and all of them left with at least one specific action to take to be more effective.

I wish you could meet each of them, but I’d like to simply offer  their first names and ask you pray for Colleen, Kate, Kathy, Shannon, Nan, Steve, Eva, Katie, Joel, Tim, Courtney, Susie and Karen. As you think of us, please pray for these writers as they continue to learn how to communicate more effectively.

Thank you for playing a role in our ministry. Without you, this training and our work in publishing wouldn’t be possible.  We’re grateful.

When is the last time you felt brave? That word has been echoing in my mind over that last few weeks.

Bethany chose “brave” as her word for the year. She’s had a tumultuous semester and a half in college, and it’s taken courage to face some unexpected challenges.

She’s preparing to travel to thee countries in Europe for a school trip this summer that will include study and helping girls who are escaping from human trafficking. She will need to stay brave —and so will we—as she takes that trip.

Author Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”

In Deuteronomy chapter 31 God directs first Moses and later Joshua to “be courageous” as they led God’s people into the Promised Land. In John 16:33 Jesus explains why we can be brave. “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” The Amplified Bible says that “take heart” means “take courage; be confident, certain, undaunted.”

In our work on Worldwide Challenge we see people show courage. For example, in the issue we’re editing now, we tell the story of David and Meg Robbins who left Mississippi and moved their family of five into a 1,000 square foot apartment to help take the gospel to New York City.

Over the last year I’ve especially enjoyed seeing Anne Marie show courage as Writing for Life has changed from classes for middle- and high-school students to adult education. Each new class has needed adjustments.

This month has brought several new opportunities. She’s teaching two weekly classes in our office, each with about a dozen of our staff members, and we’re preparing for our training in Ohio the week after next, March 25-28.

Over the next two weeks, please pray about these things.

• Ask God to help Anne Marie, me, and our coworker Amber as the three of us prepare to teach the sessions in Ohio. We’re working on our presentations this week and next.
• Pray for good connections with the 16 staff members who will be participating in the training. We want to work with each one to help them become more effective writers.
• Pray for safe travel and health for everyone who is coming, including the three of us traveling from Orlando.

We hope you find opportunities to be brave. As always, we’re grateful for your friendship and your part in our lives.

Indian-Girls taken by Beth Whitman at wanderlustandlipstick.com

Previously, Subha Shini had sent me a story she had written, asking if I could help her make it better. You read about the response I sent her.

Here are the two drafts she sent back to me.

Draft 1

Even when a pastor prayed and delivered her mother from demon possession; Manjula a 1st PUC student was not serious about her relationship with Jesus.

Manjula met our staff Mrs. Kumari in her neighborhood conducting Bible study for the youths: Manjula started attending the group regularly and the truth that she learnt from the Word of God helped her to grow in her relationship with Christ.

A few months latter Manjula attended a camp conducted by Campus Crusade: unlike her initial response to Christ  she met Pavithra a Hindu girl and shared about Chrisr to her; ‘since we both belong to the same religion and community. I could relate well with her ‘ says Manjula.

After attending the training in Evangelisim and Discipleship camp conducted on 12th to 14th January Manjula says i had a desire to share gospel with others and I am glad I could do that during this camp. ‘I now realize that it is my responsibility to let my friends know that Jesus is the true living God.’

Either draft works, depending on the point you are trying to make. Erik (taught with us in India) has taught me something more about writing stories. He says find the motivation for why people do what they do. In other words, why is each person in your story behaving the way they do. Sometimes you have to look at which person you have the most information about. Think with me. Who is this story really about?

Is it about Manjula? She’s the student who shows up in every paragraph. Her life changes so that she becomes more serious about her relationship with God.

Is this story about her mother or the pastor? Not this time, even though the pastor prays with power and authority and her mother’s life change, we only see them in the first paragraph.\

Is this story about Mrs. Kumari? God uses Mrs. Kumari to train and to disciple Manjula, but we don’t know enough about Mrs. Kumari’s life to make the story about her.

Is this story about Pavithra? Her life changes, but we know more about why Manjula shares the gospel with her than we do about Pavithra and her story.

So, let’s decide this story is about Manjula. We want to show how and why her life changes. Events tell how her life changed. Background tells why her life changed.

So the focus is something like: Manjula moves from not being very serious about her relationship with Christ to becoming serious enough to actually experience the good news of the gospel and share it easily with someone else. How did it happen? Your story will explain it.

While both drafts tell this story, and, depending on your audience, either one could work, I like draft one the best because events happen in a beginning-to-end sequence. I can follow the progression logically without having to look back and then look forward again.

Your second draft starts at the end where Manjula is sharing the gospel with Pavithra. In my opinion, the part that’s missing is why it is so significant that this event is happening. On first look, Pavithra’s life is the one that is about to be changed. To make this work, you would have to include a sentence like: Explaining the gospel didn’t always come easily to Manjula. In fact, there was a time when she didn’t care about her relationship with Christ.

Then you could move into the story about the pastor praying for her mother followed by the training Mrs. Kumari gave her in her neighborhood. Then end with with her saying the quote at camp.

In this case, draft one is done. It accomplishes everything you want it to.

There is always more than one way to tell a story. If you were given the same information Subha Shini had been given, how might you have told this story?

Levi, a machinist, has never taken a college class. Yet in his spare time, he and his wife, Katie, lead a Cru ministry that helps about 70 students on four Kansas campuses—Butler, Hutchinson, WichitaState and Emporia—grow as disciples of Jesus.

How do they do it? Of course they rely on God’s strength and on the Holy Spirit. They lean on each other, and Levi’s brother, a former Cru staff member, can offer advice.

Beyond that, Levi spends an hour or so on the phone every week with Ben, a friend of ours.Ben and others on his team coach partners like Levi as they make disciples on campuses across the United States. The coaches have served on campuses, and recognize that their experience can be multiplied this way.

I heard about Levi and Katie as we planned upcoming issues of Worldwide Challenge magazine. Their story could be a good fit for our magazine. Our purpose is to show how God is at work through Cru staff members and partners—people like Ben and Levi and Katie—and to challenge our readers to help make Christ known. Maybe Levi and Katie will serve as an example for some our readers. They might begin to make disciples on campuses or other places where they live and work.

Beyond the magazine, we’re helping people from many parts of Cru tell stories like this one for their audiences. Anne Marie is preparing to train staff members with our athletic and inner city ministries in Ohio when we travel back there for four days in March. (In the photo above, Anne Marie stops on her way to our one-day training in Ohio last October.) In the meantime, she’s been invited to train a group of women leaders at our headquarters and to help some members of the JESUS Film Project communicate better.

We’re grateful for your prayers as we continue to see God meet our needs and open new doors of ministry opportunities for us. As you think of us this month, please pray for wise planning and clear communication as we continue to train writers. Also, please pray that we will find more great stories like Levi and Katie’s so people can see God’s glory as He shows His love for people on campuses in Kansas and everywhere around the world.

Happy New Year! How did you celebrate the entry of 2014? With a party? With the family in the comfort of your home?

We welcomed in the New Year playing Uno using an ironing board as a table and then drinking sparkling juice out of paper cups at midnight at a motel in Holdrege, Neb. My parents have seen enough years start and don’t stay up until midnight anymore.

We were in my hometown the week after Christmas to be part of a wedding reception for my brother. Although it was a great family time, the cold and snow reminded us why we prefer Orlando’s winter weather.

Now we’re back home. Michael is at the University of Central Florida and Bethany is at Trevecca Nazarene University. They have both started their new semesters, and we’re both back at work. In addition to our ongoing roles, Anne Marie and I are tackling two major projects.

We continue to work on the next training events to help our fellow Cru staff members become better writers, and Anne Marie met with two staff members here at our headquarters to coach them in writing. This is the result of Anne Marie’s six years of developing Writing For Life. I’m glad that our magazine team benefits from the training and that this gives us a chance to work together to help others become better communicators.

We’re also working to meet with friends in Florida to talk about our ministry with Cru. We are praying that about 20 more families will join our team of ministry partners.

Please pray for us as we tackle both of these projects. Specifically,
• Please ask God to give us wisdom as we set the dates for the upcoming training, plan the conference contents and invite people from across the United States.
• Ask God to help us connect with people, whom He is calling to join our ministry team.
• Continue to pray for Bethany and Michael—especially that they will develop strong, beneficial relationships with people around them on their respective campuses.

Thanks for your prayers, generosity and role in our lives in this new year.