Last week, Anne Marie and I gathered around a table with five other Cru staff members to pray for most of a day. We heard great stories about God’s work in people’s lives.

On October 1, Cru staff members around the world gathered in different places for one of our twice-a-year days of prayer. We usually gather with our teams in Orlando, but this time, we joined the Philadelphia area team. It was a refreshing opportunity.

We prayed for Heather, who worked at a club as an “exotic dancer” until Christ changed her life. She showed up at a church Bible study and connected with the women she met there. One of them, a Cru staff member, began a long-term friendship that has included a difficult journey for both Heather and the staff family. Now, Heather works in a department store and speaks at outreaches about how Jesus changed her life.

We prayed for a new believer from a middle eastern country. He grew up a Muslim, and spent the summer going through a “discover the Bible” study with a Bridges staff member. Bridges is Cru’s outreach to students from other countries who are studying in the United States.

We prayed for a burgeoning Cru ministry at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. Established in 1837, that school was the first such institute in the country for African Americans. We also prayed for a new outreach at Temple University to sororities and fraternities. The staff member who leads that is seeing progress after a long time of praying and trusting God for open doors to these groups.

Praying for campus ministries fit with something we started this summer. At our Cru staff conference, we learned about an effort by 20 organizations to begin Christian movements on campuses that may not have them. The first step is for someone to prayer-walk each campus.

We stopped at three campuses in Nebraska where there was no record of a prayer walk. We walked and prayed for God to begin spiritual movements on each. There are still more than 2,500 campuses that need to be prayed for. You might find a campus near you on the website everycampus.com/.

We’re grateful for your prayers for us. We just returned from our trip to Pennsylvania. It was greatly encouraging as we connected with friends and two churches.

Over the next few weeks, please pray for Anne Marie in her new role with the International School Project. Please also pray for her mother, Helen, who is facing some health challenges.

Thank you for your prayers and partnership in our ministry.

Last week, I walked to the space that will be our team’s new office. In one sense, it isn’t far: 77 steps from my desk to the top of a stairway, down 24 stairs, then another 236 steps leading into another building.

In another sense, the move feels like a long trip. For about 20 years, since Cru moved into these buildings, my office has been within sight of its current location.

But the coming physical move won’t be the biggest change — our new responsibilities are more important. We’ll merge with another team, and together, continue our current work while writing for more Cru publications, websites and smartphone apps.

We’ve already begun writing how-to articles for Cru’s MissionHub app. It helps followers of Christ build disciples by showing their friends how they can know God more fully. You can try it out at get.missionhub.com.

Meanwhile, we’re gathering stories for Cru Storylines from Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Colorado and El Salvador. We’re preparing a video about a refugee from Cuba who met Christ through the JESUS film. And we’re researching possible stories from Sri Lanka, Australia, California, Georgia and Washington, D.C. God is at work all over the world.

I look forward to our team’s new opportunities. Over the next few weeks, would you pray for our transition as we form a new team and begin doing writing projects for other Cru ministries? And would you pray for Anne Marie and me, as we visit friends and churches in Pennsylvania between Sept. 20 and Oct. 7.

We’re grateful for your prayers and generosity.

— Mark, for the Winz family —

On a Wednesday afternoon, Anne Marie took a microphone to the front of a dormitory meeting at Colorado State University (above).  She introduced speakers to Cru staff members during our staff conference, Cru19.
 
This was part of Cru’s Bloggers-Authors Meetup, a series of events she’s helped with over the last few years. These events help Cru staff members be more successful writers. Our staff conference gave us a chance to be together as Cru staff writers.
 
The conference filled a bit more than a week of our month-long trip to five states in July and August. We visited friends, ministry partners and family members in Nebraska and neighboring states. It’s good to be back in Orlando again.

 
Thank you for praying for our trip. We’re grateful that you are part of our team of ministry partners. 

Chantha, now a 33-year-old teacher in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, trusted  Christ while working as a housekeeper for a pastor and his family in Malaysia. They treated her with love and respect, and taught her to speak English. When she attended church with them, she heard the gospel and trusted Christ to forgive her sins. Later, she returned to Cambodia and became a school teacher. 

At a recent International School Project Dream Makers conference in Cambodia, she learned about life maps, a way for students and teachers to tell their life stories by drawing pictures of important events in their lives. It’s a powerful exercise that takes place at each conference. Teachers draw their life maps and share them with their small groups of teachers. 

Knowing most of her small group members were Buddhists, Chantha was concerned they might not understand her decision to follow Christ. She hesitatingly showed them her life map. The teachers in her group warmly embraced her and her story. 

On the last day of the conference, an official from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports gave a speech and invited some of the teachers to share their life maps. In front of the entire group, Chantha explained her life map. The government official complimented her for including her faith journey in her story and referred back to her story three more times as he finished his talk. 

Teachers in 30 countries around the world attend conferences like this one. They learn exercises — like making life maps — so they can better understand their own stories and talk to their students about morals and values. 

As you think of us over the next few weeks, please pray for safe travel and good connections with people. We plan to be at our Cru staff conference in Colorado July 18-26. On the way there and back, we plan to visit family members, friends and churches in Nebraska and surrounding states. We’ll be on the road from July 11 to August 3. And please let us know how we can pray for you.

— Anne Marie, for the Winzes —

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Last week, a man on a bicycle left Washington, D.C. He plans to arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado, by July 18. Our team is playing a small role in this journey.

He’s carrying all he thinks he’ll need, including camping gear and a bike repair kit. He plans to ride about 60 miles a day, day after day, for almost six weeks. (I’m impressed. I recently biked 60 miles in one day, and I had no interest in getting on my bike the next day.)

A couple weeks ago, I got an email asking if our team of writers and editors would help raise the profile of a little-known part of Cru. Dennis plans to bike almost 2,000 miles doing a kind of bike-a-thon to raise money. Along the way, he hopes to post online updates. But as he’d be on his own and not carrying a laptop, he would need help with those updates.

Unlike most Cru fundraising efforts, this one is asking Cru staff members to give. The part of Cru he’s already begun raising money for, the Ethnic Ministry Fund, provides matching funds to help those from different ethnicities reach their ministry locations. Staff members from minority cultures often find fundraising more challenging than those who are part of the majority.

Dennis, like many of us, sees this need as crucial to Cru’s long-term success. So, as he thought about riding a long distance, he decided he wanted to help meet this need.

For our team, this work will be a stretch. Typically, it takes a few months to prepare an issue of Cru Storylines, as it always did for the magazine. For this project, we need to work fast, doing several updates on a webpage for Cru staff members each week. We’re building a new set of skills that will help our future work.

That will be challenging, but that’s the easy part. Dennis is doing the hard part. If you’re somewhere between D.C. and Fort Collins over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for our Cru bike rider.

As you think of us, please pray for safety and health for Dennis as he travels and for the fund to benefit from his work. Pray for me and our team to effectively communicate the progress of Dennis’ ride. And pray for Anne Marie as she continues adjusting to her new role with the International School Project.

We’re grateful for your generosity, prayers and friendship.

— Mark, for the Winzes —

KJ grew up following Islam in Gambia, a sliver of a country in West Africa. Eleven years ago, a missionary from Nigeria showed the JESUS film in KJ’s village.  He began following Christ. Facing persecution, he had to walk to the next village to shop as those in his village refused to do business with him. He now helps lead a church in his village, has planted churches in two others and is working to start a fourth.

This is one of three stories about people from Muslim cultures turning to Christ that we’re working on for Cru Storylines^TM. We rarely get to tell such stories as we need to protect these believers and ministries. Yet in some places, believers are bold enough to share their stories.

 In Great Britain, an immigrant from Iran who grew up Muslim helps lead a ministry. She and her husband, also a Christ-follower who grew up following Islam, take the gospel to other Muslim immigrant families through FamilyLife^®, a Cru^® outreach.

On campuses across North Africa and the Middle East, where virtually every student is Muslim, teams of Christians visit to tell about Christ. Because their time in these countries is short — up to a year, but sometimes shorter — they can take risks that long-term missionaries cannot. If they face trouble, they can leave earlier than planned with little damage to ongoing ministry.

We’re preparing a story about a young man who came to Christ thanks to such an outreach. Because we cannot show his photo, we’ll show the story in a series of illustrations — almost like a true-life comic book. This is a new process for our team.

While my team works on such stories, Anne Marie continues writing about the work of the International School Project. Their work, likewise, often takes place in countries where we must report only carefully. Read more about ISP at http://www.isponline.org/.

Thanks for praying for Anne Marie as she works on her article from Cambodia. She’s made great progress, with some work still to go. As you think of us over the next few weeks, would you pray for wisdom as we make our summer travel plans? We’ll be in Colorado for our bi-annual Cru staff conference, and will be visiting friends and churches on the way.

Thank you so much for praying for us, and for your generosity.

Since we can’t show you photos from these stories, above is a photo of us at the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City. We visited there during the Evangelical Press Association convention last month.

Anne Marie and I rushed down an airport hallway in Dallas. An early morning thunderstorm in Orlando delayed our departure, leaving us only 15 minutes between flights. If we missed this one, we’d have to go through Phoenix or Chicago to get from Dallas to Oklahoma City.

We made it, and got to Oklahoma City, site of the Evangelical Press Association convention, as planned. It was only April 5, and this was already our second trip of the month.

April 1, we woke up in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., to teach Writing for Life to communicators—both professionals and volunteers—working for a denomination. Their director took our class at last year’s EPA convention and invited us to train his team.

We enjoyed meeting them, and spending eight hours in training (top photo). Several team members expressed gratitude for the structures and processes we explained.

In Oklahoma, we enjoyed taking part in the EPA convention without any formal role.

For the last nine years, one or both of us had had a teaching or leading role at the annual  event, We enjoyed interacting with other  professionals and taking several classes. We did accept awards forCru Storylines^TM, along with two coworkers. (In the second photo, we hold the award with Rachel Ferchak, editor in chief, second from right, and Rachel Streich, a writer.)

We did have an informal role, helping host two publishers from overseas who joined the convention. Anne Marie helped Mary, from Mexico, find her way around, and Mark did the same for Benjamin, from India. And while we were in Oklahoma City, we took a short side trip to visit my brother, Rex, and his wife, Val.

As you think of us over the next few weeks, please pray for Anne Marie to complete her writing from Cambodia, and for us to connect with current and potential new ministry partners.

Thank you so much for your interest in our work, and your prayers and generosity.

After an exhausting week in the classroom, Somaly rode her motorbike across town through a driving rainstorm and arrived late to a meeting for Cambodian teachers sponsored by the International School Project in April 2017.

When she discovered ISP was connected to Cru, she remembered her college years where she had grown in her faith because of the Campus Crusade staff members at the University of Phnom Penh.

I enjoyed meeting Somaly (center in this photo), Chandra (right) and other teachers at the ISP training in Cambodia.

After graduating from college, she married, had children and began her teaching career. She wanted to become a teacher of influence, helping other teachers discover faith in God and also grow professionally, but she didn’t know how.

Somaly learned about teacher movement communities at the ISP training conference. ISP equips teachers to form communities and make disciples of other teachers. We also help them plan professional development events for their peers.

She quickly agreed to help lead a teacher community, knowing how much she and the other teachers needed the encouragement a group like this could provide. Now, about 70 teachers belong to the Phnom Penh community.

Earlier this month, I traveled 26 hours across 12 time zones to Cambodia where I met Somaly and attended a leadership conference. Teachers from six cities across Cambodia received training. Now, they are now trusting God to create teacher communities for discipleship and professional development.

Would you pray for these things?

• That Somaly and other teacher will see God work in their schools.
• That I can write an article showing Somaly’s story to encourage others.  
• That Mark and I can effectively train a group of writers in Jacksonville, Fla., the first few days of April.
• That Mark’s father and my mother and father will continue in good health.

Thank you for your generosity and for prayers for us.

— Anne Marie, for the Winz family

Can you name a teacher who inspired you? Teachers around the world influence an average of 30 students every year. They care about students, but who cares for the teachers?

This month, I joined the International School Project, a branch of Cru^® that cares for teachers. In 30 countries around the world, we’ve helped educators establish teacher communities so they can help their peers grow professionally and spiritually.

Somaly, a teacher in Cambodia, has prayed for years that God would use her in the lives of her students. Six months ago, Kevin, a staff member with the International School Project, asked God to lead him to teachers in Cambodia who wanted to help other teachers and students grow in their faith.

When Somaly and Kevin met in Cambodia six months ago, they became answers to each other’s prayers. Somaly and three other teachers formed a nucleus of the teacher community, trusting God to use them to make disciples of other teachers.

Next month, I plan to travel to Cambodia along with Kevin and two other Americans to provide leadership training to approximately 20 Cambodian teachers from four cities. In June, others will return for a conference for more than 100 teachers who will learn how to use ISP’s DreamMakers curriculum to teach morals and values, including a gospel presentation, to students.

After the conference, teachers will be invited to join the teacher community where they can talk about their experiences in the classroom. Spiritual training will be available to those who are interested as well.

I will collect stories about teachers who have benefited professionally and spiritually from ISP’s work. I look forward to meeting Somaly and other teachers, and learning more about them.

While I’m gone, Mark will remain in Orlando and continue leading the writers team that creates our digital magazine, Cru Storylines.

Please pray for us this month:

• Pray that nothing will keep the teachers who have registered for the leadership conference, from attending.
• Pray for our team as we prepare to present content during the conference, and that the content will inspire teachers to lead their communities well.
• Pray that some teachers will come to know Christ and will join the spiritual training part of ISP’s outreach.

Thank you so much for your prayers and generosity. We’re truly grateful.

Gina (left), Zana (second) and Daniel (center) set up a film showing.

God is at work around the world, changing people’s lives. It’s our privilege to help disciple people by showing their stories. After all, discipleship means showing what it looks like to follow Christ, and we show that in every story.

Last fall, I went to Romania to gather one of these stories for the March issue of Cru Storylines. Along the way, I found a second story that I want to share with you.

Gina Teodorescu serves with Cru in Romania. Now a widow in her early 60s, Gina and her former husband Ionel, came to Christ during the Romanian Revolution that overturned Communism.

The two met as students at Romania’s top engineering school. After graduating, they worked at the largest state-run manufacturing plant in the country. Ionel became the plant manager. During times of crisis, his government expected him to organize factory workers into a battalion that would defend the country and its rulers.

In 1989, Romanians overthrew dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who had ordered the army to shoot at innocent civilians. Ionel ignored the order to bring factory workers as a battalion to the capital.

During those tense days, Gina and Ionel, both atheists who had been reading the Bible, asked God to protect them and their children. The revolution ended 3 days later, and they remained safe. They surrendered their lives to Christ.

Soon after, a factory worker left for six months to show the JESUS film in across the country. When he returned, Gina and Ionel helped him show the film locally. Two years later, they left their jobs and joined the staff of Cru.

Over the years, Ionel and Gina helped many people in Romania meet Jesus. One day, they spoke to Gypsy Christians in Craiova. Ionel declined their offer to become their pastor, but promised to return. Two weeks later, he died of cancer.

After taking three months off, Gina traveled back to  Craiova and met with the Gypsies. This took courage. She’d grown up scared of Gypsies due to an event early in her life. Society’s prejudice against Gypsies only strengthened her fear. (You can read more about this in Storylines in March.)

Yet to honor Ionel’s promise and to serve God, she went. She began coaching Daniel and Zana, a married couple who have now planted 11 churches in 6 years.

I wrote about Daniel and Zana for Storylines, but Gina’s story was every bit as interesting as theirs. Her faith inspired me. By telling Daniel and Zana’s story, and showing how Gina mentored them, we can encourage others to trust God with their lives.

And while you wait for the rest of what I wrote from Romania, you can read the story Mark wrote about God changing lives through SpeakOut camps in Slovakia: https://www.cru.org/storylines/2019/january/slovak-students-speak-out.

Thank you for your generous gifts to Cru on our behalf. We’re so grateful for your friendship and your kindness.