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/
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