Finances

We first want to start off by thanking you all for praying for us! Thank you for your encouragement and kind words. We appreciate each one of you and are so very thankful for your partnership in the gospel! We have really seen the Lord do some amazing things since we sent out our ask letter in December. As we know that many of you are praying for us, we wanted to update you on what we have seen the Lord do. We are SO AMAZED and humbled by his gifts to us and just want to thank you for giving so sacrificially. Since December, we have seen close to $11,500 in one time gifts come in and approximately $1000/mo in new monthly support!! Praise the Lord!!! This is such an encouragement to us and gets us excited to continue to see what God has in store for us as we continue on the support trail. We are currently at 40% of our goal! We ask that you please continue to pray that our efforts will be blessed, the Lord will meet us where we are at and that we will continually be developed and refined by Him, and that we will hit our goal (or beyond) by June. Also, we will need to move again by June as our lease is up and we do not know where we will be going, so please pray that we will find a great place to live within our budget and that another move will not be hard on the kids (they really don't want to move again). Thank you all again and please let us know what we can be praying for you!

How to Ruin Your Life by 30...

Tony got an invitation to the AGR greek house at ISU to give a presentation called How To Ruin Your Life by 30 and is based on the book with the same title by Steve Farrar. It was exciting to see 32 greek students show up to listen!  How to Ruin Your Life by 30 is about the everyday mistakes you are making right now that will quickly catch up with you and ultimately ruin your life. It is designed to help students to learn how to handle priorities, responsibility, relationships, finances, learn about cause and effect and where good priorities come from. They really enjoyed the program and 28 out of 32 students indicated that they wanted more information about God and bible studies! This is wonderful news and a great start to branching into the greek system.

TCX 2013

Happy New Year! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday! We were able to spend Christmas with our families and then on December 27th we headed up to Minneapolis, MN for our annual TCX conference. We brought the kids with us this year and they really loved it! We had 45 students attend from ISU and ? Community College and a total of 1,500 students from all over the midwest. You can check out our TCX website http://gotcx.com/ to see photos, listen to talks and hear what the students are saying about the conference. The students got to hear from some amazing speakers this year: Troy Dobbs, Nicole Lewis and Dr. KP Yohannan. Troy Dobbs is the Senior Pastor at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, MN. Nicole Lewis works with the Greater Northwest Global Missions team, traveling to encourage Cru missionaries. Dr. KP Yohannan is the founder and international director of Gospel for Asia, a missions organization involved in reaching the unreached in Asian nations.

Along with great sessions, the students got opportunities to attend seminars in the afternoons. Once again, Tony was able to teach a seminar on the Holy Spirit. He has really enjoyed teaching this it has been a popular one among the students. If you check out the TCX website, you will be able to hear a few of the seminars that were recorded: Bible Studies, Love of Scripture, God's Love, Art of Manliness, Heaven, Making Disciples, Perspectives on Homosexuality...to name a few.

During the conference, the students get an opportunity to do a community outreach and share Christ with the city of Minneapolis. The students connect with local churches and hand out Boxes of Love (food) to the needy in the churches areas. As they hand out these boxes, the students are able to share Christ with those that receive the box as well  as give them information to connect them to a local church. This outreach is great for those that receive the box, but the students also are touched by the lives that they share with and always come back from the day of outreach with hundreds of stories about how the Lord was working! Below is a picture from the day of outreach. The moving trucks were full of boxes!

The evening session on December 30 consisted of the one act play called The Bema (www.thebema.org). This incredible play is a fictional drama inspired by 2 Corinthians 5:10 that we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body. The Bema was originally performed by Pete Briscoe and we have a staff member with Cru that performed it for the students. If you visit  http://new.livestream.com/cruwinter/tcx2013 and scroll down to Dec. 30 session 5, you will be able to hear the student's experiences from the day of outreach then watch The Bema (if you want to skip straight to The Bema, you can skip ahead to around the 47:00 minute mark).


It has been a number of years since we have brought our kids to TCX, so they were very excited to come! The conference provides childcare during the morning and evening sessions so that the staff parents are able to attend. One thing that we love about the childcare is that it isn't just a babysitting service. There is curriculum so that our children are hearing the gospel as well! This year our kids got to learn about the 10/40 window and do a service project at Feed My Starving Children.  Clare was able to go with Ellie and Isaiah to FMSC and pack meals for families overseas and it was such a wonderful and amazing experience. Now, our kids tell us that they want to travel to countries in the 10/40 window so that they can share Jesus with them! If you want to learn more about Feed My Starving Children visit http://www.fmsc.org/

Merry Christmas!

"We are not guaranteed tomorrow..."

Our big conference for November was held on the second weekend in Minneapolis. We saw over 300 juniors and seniors attend from all over the Upper Midwest region to hear about eternal perspective and how to make Godly decisions about their future as they approach graduation. This professional conference prepares students for life after college. Whether God calls these students to be teachers, engineers, farmers, lawyers, or vocational ministers...we want these students to know that their first calling is to love and serve God. We challenge them to be a witness of the Gospel and to build God's kingdom no matter what they do for a day job!

Life Options is close to our hearts because it is during a Life Options Conference our senior year at ISU that we clearly heard the Lord's calling on our life. A couple weeks before the conference, we had an amazing opportunity come up to buy a dairy farm in Hawaii. Tony had a double major in Animal Science and Dairy Science and when this opportunity came up for this farm, it was a dream come true! We had booked tickets and connected with the owner of the farm and planned on flying out the week after our Life Options conference. During the conference, we clearly heard the Lord calling us to join staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. We were excited to hear so clearly from the Lord, but also disappointed as we really wanted this farm to be our calling! The farm would have been a great fit for us and was doing so well (it had a contract with Meadow Gold Ice Cream) that we could have retired in 10 years and then went into the mission field. But, during the conference the speaker said something that we just couldn't get out of our heads...he said, "You are not guaranteed tomorrow, so do not put off something that you should do today for another time." We did fly to Hawaii and check out the farm (it was wonderful and a perfect fit for us), but the whole time we were there, we just kept hearing those words..."you are not guaranteed tomorrow." So, we passed on the farm and said yes to the Lord. It has been 11 years since that decision and the road has not been easy, but we can look back on it and know that we were obedient to the Lord and to his calling...and, we still live by the motto that we are not guaranteed tomorrow!

International Justice Mission

We were privileged to spend the last week of October bringing awareness of social injustice to Iowa State. We partnered with International Justice Mission (a national partner of CRU) in raising awareness and funds for human trafficking. We wanted to raise awareness for this problem, share our faith, and give people the opportunity to take action. As part of this week, we showed the film "Sex and Money,'" that highlights the huge problem of sex slavery and prostitution in the United States. We used this film to encourage people to write to members of Congress from Iowa and to contribute financially to IJM's cause. The International Justice Mission is an incredible organization that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation, and other forms of violent oppression.  U.S. News and World Report highlighted IJM as one of 10 non-profits "making a difference". To learn more about International Justice Mission or how you can be involved with this wonderful organization, visit www.ijm.org.

Fall Retreat

We had such a wonderful time at Fall Retreat and the weather was perfect! The kids truly love this conference and look forward to it every year! Below is a picture of our speaker, Gary Schmalz (former ISU director of CRU) sharing with the students about boldly living out your faith! It was so encouraging to hear from him and we had a handful of students indicate that they made first time decisions to put their faith in Christ this weekend! 

On the last day, we sat in a circle (pictured below) and opened the floor up for students to share how God had spoken to them this weekend. Here are few things that they shared:

"I am challenged to take the 30 day challenge to start each day off with God and to start my day focused on God and not to let myself get distracted by everything else going on." --Jenny

"Apparently I've gained a heart for people...I was just planning on graduating and getting a job, but now I can't think of anything better to do for the next 2 years than serving the Lord with CRU." --Darin

"Hearing about great men who have walked with God and hearing how a simple act of submission in the morning can have such an effect...I am choosing to surrender to God in the morning and throughout the day." --Matthew

"This weekend made me start wanting to move forward with being more involved with God's plan at ISU. We need to take steps to move it forward...it won't move itself forward." --Nick

We feel so privileged that God has chosen us to be here at this place and at this time! We love working with the students at Iowa State and we can't wait to see what more He has in store for us!