Hello from Orlando. We’re headed to Pennsylvania soon. We plan to attend the Evangelical Press Association convention April 11-14, then to speak at two churches the next two weekends.

At the convention, we’ll interact with professional Christian communicators from across the country and learn how to be more effective in our work. In addition, Mark is scheduled to offer advice to the team that produces a denominational magazine and Anne Marie plans to help judge the group‘s annual scholarship entries.

Then, at both churches, we’ll report about our work with Cru and thank church members who help fund our ministry. We’ll be at Parker Ford Church in Pottstown the morning of April 16 and at Great Valley Presbyterian Church the morning of April 23.

Please pray we’ll encourage people at each stop and for safety and health as we travel and interact with a variety of people.  

Thanks for your prayers and for playing a part on our ministry team.

—Mark, for the Winzes

Around the world, people celebrate holidays that are unknown, or little known, in the United States. One of those is International Women’s Day on March 8. Anne Marie first became aware of the holiday when she worked for the International School Project. She suggested that we take advantage of the event to share the gospel. 

She wrote an article for Cru.org titled “5 Examples of Women God Honored in the Bible” that will help women see how much Jesus loves them. She starts the article this way: 

This International Women’s Day, you can know that God sees, honors and values women. He has designed a special place for us in His plan to restore and redeem humanity. God’s love for women is radically different from the world’s.

Both now and throughout history, many women have endured unfair treatment and have been devalued by culture and society. 

She goes on to point out that women are more likely than men to be victims of violence, to live in poverty and to be illiterate. Those facts are among the reasons the United Nations officially recognized the day in 1977. 

Anne Marie went on to highlight ways that Jesus honored women. She included five examples.   

1. Mary, the Mother of Jesus; 

2. Mary Magdalene, the First Person to See the Resurrected Jesus;

3. The Marginalized Samaritan Woman (John 4); 

4. The Woman With Chronic Illness  (Luke 8) and

5. The Woman Who Wept Publicly (Luke 7:36-50).

She also let readers know about her.BIBLE, where anyone can hear the Bible read by women. You can listen to any book of the Bible on the her.BIBLE website or app, or read more about it in a Cru Storylines article I helped edit called “Highlighting Women’s Voices in God’s Story.” 

Anne Marie closed the article with: 

This International Women’s Day, remember that God sees women, honors women, celebrates women and has a special place for us in His mission to bring restoration to a hurting world. 

How can Jesus’ interactions with women encourage you today?

This month, please pray that women from around the world will encounter Christ in meaningful ways. Pray that her article will bring comfort and understanding to women who encounter it. As always, we’re grateful for your prayers and generosity. 

— Mark, for the Winzes

Happy New Year. We hope your Christmas celebration was enjoyable.

We enjoyed the holiday, spending five days in Nashville at Bethany’s home. Michael joined us from Wisconsin for most of the time. Bethany enjoys watching cooking shows on TV, and we benefitted as she prepared most of the meals. We played games, did puzzles and watched Christmas movies. It was the first time in more than a year that all four of us spent more than a few hours together.

As we move into 2023, we’re looking forward to continued ministry opportunities. Anne Marie is coaching a writer on our team and is serving as the editor for a story. She’ll take on more writing assignments soon. She also writes devotionals for our church.

I continue to serve as the managing editor for Cru Storylines articles. I help lead weekly editorial meetings, and plan and assign stories to our writers, editors, photographers and illustrators. As a project manager, I also coordinate other communications projects. Our Advent devotional series just ended, and soon we’ll launch our Holy Week series for this year.

We’re grateful for another year to serve God with our skills. Thank you for helping to make that possible through your prayers and generosity.

Please pray for God’s guidance as we take on new projects. There are more opportunities than there is time, and we want to be wise. And please keep praying for Anne Marie’s health. She’s doing well fighting an autoimmune disease, but she’s taking a variety of medications. Pray that she’ll be able to reduce those without pain and with increasing strength. And do let us know how we can pray for you.

Sincerely in Christ, Mark, for the Winz family

This month started with sad news for our family. Anne Marie’s dad, Jim Larkins, passed away on Nov. 1. While he’d been ill, we still weren’t ready to say goodbye.

I met him a few months before Anne Marie and I were married. That trip included a playground basketball game with a few of Anne Marie’s family members. Jim was clearly a better player than I was. I later learned he’d played college ball at Georgetown.

A second basketball-related event came about four months later. We arrived in Pennsylvania a week before our April wedding. We hadn’t noticed that we scheduled our wedding for the weekend of the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament. That was always an important weekend for Jim. He was a fan of all sports, but especially college basketball.

That weekend in that year was especially important. After we arrived in Pennsylvania, we learned that Jim was passing up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He’d won the lottery that allowed him to attend the tournament. He never said anything to us. He gave up those tickets to walk Anne Marie down the aisle.

Over the last seven years, we saw the forbearance he showed then in a more important way. After a bout with stomach cancer, he could no longer swallow. The muscles in his throat refused to work.

He had to feed himself through a feeding tube. Yet he was a good sport, rarely complaining about the inconvenience. He even took part in a few family events that happened during a meal.

Before we heard about Jim’s passing, we planned to use this letter to tell you about an article Anne Marie wrote for Cru Storylines called “Giving Thanks When Chronic Illness Moves In.” It tells about her commitment to keep thanking God even as she’s battled an autoimmune disease this year. Instead, we’ll invite you to go online to Storylines.Cru.org where that title will appear in the near future.

And Anne Marie and her family are learning how to keep thanking God through this loss. Please pray for peace and comfort for Anne Marie, her mom, Helen, and her siblings, Kathleen, Eileen, Maureen and Joe.

Through it all, we’re grateful for your friendship, prayers and generosity.    

Sincerely in Christ, Mark, for the Winz family

In July, Heather visited her family for the first time in 20 years, and her 6-year-old son, Kaiden, finally met the family. Amazingly, Cru Storylines played a role in arranging the reunion.

Last week, we joined Cru staff members around the world for one of Cru’s twice-a-year days of prayer. It brought to mind how Heather’s connection to our publication started. Three years ago, Anne Marie and I were in Pennsylvania. As Cru’s day of prayer overlapped with our trip, we joined several Philadelphia-area staff members for the day. We met Brad Daubenspeck, who told us about Heather.

She was separated from her family and visited a Bible study that Brad’s wife, Kim, was part of. Heather, a single mother, needed help. She needed to work and wanted to find someone who would watch Kaiden, then a month old. Kim volunteered. The Daubenspecks became Heather’s family in the Philadelphia area. They even invited her to move in with them.

When I  told the Cru Storylines editorial team about the story, we agreed that it might belong in our publication. Sarah Wontorcik, an intern on our team, wrote the story. Due to COVID-19, there was a delay before photographer Ted Wilcox was able to visit to do his work.

We finally published the story, “Grace Without Conditions” (shown above), in our January issue this year. It told how the families met, how Heather came to faith in Jesus, and how she helped in Brad and Kim’s ministry. 

At the Cru staff conference this year, in line for coffee, Sarah met Brad and Kim. They excitedly told Sarah that Heather’s sister had found the online story. The sister contacted Kim on Facebook. The family had been looking for Heather for 20 years, wondering if she was still alive.

We often tell you about how our online communications ministries reach a large number of people. But those numbers represent real people who are being reconciled with God, just like Heather has begun to reconcile with her family.  

Thanks for the role you play in this ministry of reconciliation. We’re grateful for your prayers and generosity. Please keep praying for Anne Marie to find relief from her symptoms as she faces an autoimmune disease. She’s started a new, more aggressive treatment plan this month, and we continue trusting God for a return to good health.

— Sincerely in Christ, Mark, for the Winzes

Last month, we spent a lot of time with our coworkers preparing for the coming year. Because about half all of Cru staff members work on campuses, we plan around the school year. Our jobs continue to adjust to help make disciples and share Jesus’ love as effectively as possible.

Twice, we met with the Cru Storylines team (shown in this photo). Soon, we’ll change how we distribute the story we write. Instead of sending a separate email with only one kind of stories, we’ll add our content to another Cru newsletter. That way, the maximum number of people will see our stories, and Cru Storylines readers will see other Cru materials.

You can sign up for the Cru newsletter by going to Cru.org and clicking on the blue “subscribe to Cru” button or by going to this page.

We then spent a week meeting with the more than 40 people who work with Cru’s communications team. We got to know people who do different parts of the work — writing and editing; photography, video, audio, illustration and design; and the technology to get the products we make into people’s hands.

We talked about making sure everything we publish offers each reader a chance to take a step closer to Jesus. If someone knows little about Jesus, we want them to find basic information. About 30% of those who come to our website come through a Google search. They might know nothing about Cru and little about faith.

For those already following Jesus, we want to help them. Maybe they’ll learn to pray, to study the Bible or to lead a discipleship group.

We want all of our publishing to be welcoming to all readers, confident about the importance of following Christ, and wise so no one will feel the material isn’t beneficial for them.

We’re grateful to you for making it possible for us to do this work.

Sincerely in Christ, Mark, for the Winz family

Recently, we’ve heard two amazing stories about the “JESUS” film. Cru staff members and a wide variety of partner churches and organizations use the film to proclaim the gospel and build disciples around the world. 

In a country in Asia where most people follow another religion, films from the Jesus Film Project were shown on national television. For a country where the gospel is not openly shared, this could be considered a miracle.

In March, as part of a Women’s Day celebration, they aired “Magdalena ,” a version of the “JESUS” film that focuses on Christ’s tender regard for women. Then the week leading up to Easter in April, the “Life of Jesus” movie, based on the Gospel of John, aired for three nights.

A police officer shared with a Cru leader that he had watched the movie with his wife and said that it was the first time they had heard of the gospel, and that they decided to learn more about Jesus.

More recently, in Nigeria, a church planting team visited a village. The people there were concerned as it was time to plant crops. However, there’d been no sign of clouds or rain for 23 days. The people had tried their traditional religious practices, but nothing worked.

A “JESUS” film team went to the drying village well and prayed. Later that day, a soaking rain fell. When they showed the film that night, the whole village turned out to watch and respond. (Click on this link to watch a video from Nigeria.)

  This month, would you pray that film teams showing “JESUS” around the world will find open doors and will see answered prayers? Also, please keep praying for Anne Marie’s recovery from an auto-immune problem. She’s making slow, but hopeful, progress. Thanks for praying, 

As always, we’re grateful for your prayers for us and your commitment to us.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark, for the Winz family

Two weeks ago, I sat across from my supervisor for an end-of-the-year review. How is May the end of the year? That makes sense for Cru since the Campus ministry — where Cru started in 1951 — is still the largest part of our organization. We plan for the year in July and August, and we review the year in May and June.

Our online publishing teams also review our work at this time of year. When we mailed “Worldwide Challenge” magazine to people, we couldn’t know how much of it each person read. With online publishing, we can know how people respond.

Recently, we heard some great reports:

• In the year ending May 10, 2022, there were 7.7 million page views on our main website, Cru.org (shown above). That included 4.9 million new users who had never been on the site before.
• People didn’t just glance — they spent an average of more than six minutes on some pages.
• Our social media outreaches connected with 27.6 million people, and posts asking people to pray for Ukraine reached more than 100,000 accounts.
• More than 500,000 readers saw our email newsletters.
• More than 730,000 gospel presentation booklets were purchased through our online Cru store.
• Through our Legacy Video outreach, 616 videos were viewed for a total of more than 1 million minutes. Two Muslim-majority countries, where Christians often suffer persecution, were among the top 10 countries from which people accessed those videos. I think you’d enjoy the Legacy videos, which you can find at that link.

As you think of us over the next few weeks, please keep praying for Anne Marie’s health. She’s slowly gaining strength, but still has to pace herself. And ask God to empower us as we plan, write, edit and publish stories — that our work would help people around the world meet Jesus and grow in their faith.

Thank you for your prayers and partnership. We’re truly grateful.

Sincerely in Christ, Mark, for the Winz family

Three years ago, I joined the International School Project, a ministry of Cru that helps teachers around the world build discipleship communities. I planned to write and travel. It was a great opportunity, so I followed God’s leading.

When the pandemic started, I said goodbye to planned trips. I used the time to train the other writers on the team. They were quick studies and created wonderful work. I worked myself out of a job and my responsibilities gravitated toward administration.

I enjoyed the time working with people, managing projects is not part of my skill set. I prayed about what might come next. I sensed God’s leading me to write full time.

While I value reaching educators with the gospel and training them to reach their peers, I’m looking forward to a new opportunity.

Earlier this year, I tentatively began a conversation with my friends at Cru Storylines, our digital magazine. That led to an invitation to join their team. I accepted, and I started that role last week.

Next, I’ll start writing a story about giving thanks that will run in the November issue.

Thank you for praying for me as I take on this new role. My health has been an uphill battle. On a positive note, I have a diagnosis (myositis), a doctor, and a treatment plan. I can tell I’m making progress, but it’s going to take time for me to regain my strength. Please keep praying.

Thank you for the valuable part you play in the work God has called Mark and me to do together. Because of your prayers and generosity, we’re able to equip students and laypeople around the world to share the gospel with their peers.

Sincerely in Christ, — Anne Marie, for the Winz family

We’re grateful for your prayers as we continue to help build disciples around the world.  In our last letter, we asked you to pray for Ukraine and the surrounding countries. Here’s one story. 

“Is there war here?” Aleksander, a primary student, asked. He’s one of at least 2.5 million Ukrainian children who’ve moved to safer places since the Russian invasion began. He fled to the city of Ternopil with his mother.

They arrived at a school where Svitlana, an ISP trained educator, serves as principal. Her school has a bomb shelter in the basement. When air raid sirens scream, teachers and students shuffle and hide in the basement. Svitlana and other Christian educators in her school are reaching out to meet physical needs by providing food and makeshift beds for 24 people. They also offer spiritual and emotional support.

“The children who have arrived have nothing else,” Svitlana says. “Their parents are already deeply traumatized.”

While much attention has focused on Ukraine and neighboring countries, Cru’s work goes on around the world. Mark continues to serve as managing editor for Cru Storylines, while also overseeing other communications projects. His team is working on stories from New York, California, Africa and South America.

We’re thankful for your prayers for our health. Mark’s eye surgery went well and he’s adjusting to having good distance vision after being near-sighted for most of his life. He’s also doing physical therapy for a hip problem that is getting better.

We’re still trying to figure out what is going on with my health. In December, I began to have lower body weakness and pain, as well as shoulder pain. 

Blood tests indicated a serious autoimmune problem. With that information, I saw a rheumatologist. He requested more blood tests and a CT scan, which confirmed the diagnosis. 

As you think of us, please pray:

• For growing strength in my arms and legs as I take prescribed medications and continue with a physical therapy routine.
• For no side effects from the prescriptions. I’ve had some stomach pain from one of them. 
• For Mark’s continued adjustment to his eyesight, and to using reading glasses for close-up work.
• For both of our ministries to continue. So far, we’ve both been able to keep working almost full time around our medical appointments.  

Thanks again. We treasure having you as part of our lives.

Sincerely in Christ, Anne Marie, for the Winz family