Newsletters

August 1999

An Addition to Our Home

We will be adding two feet to our home in February. Two little feet that is, with five toes on each foot. Yes, Shelly and I are expecting! We are really excited and certainly a little scared. The due date is February 7 (We missed our chance to have the Millennial Baby).

Shelly has had a sonogram and everything looks great with the baby. Shelly herself is doing fine, though she is a little more tired than usual (I think its just an excuse to take more naps . . . Just kidding!)

Because of having a baby, our insurance will be going up. As a result, we also must raise a little more support. But even with that increase we are still at 91% of our monthly support level! We are thankful to be nearing the end of this initial support raising time and are ready to begin our ministry in the fall. We cannot begin our ministry until we have all of our monthly support raised, so please pray that our remaining support comes in quickly. Our first activities in preparation for the fall begin on August 20 and we hope to be finished by then. We thank God for all of you who support our ministry faithfully through your gifts and prayers!  

A Vision for the World

On July 15 we loaded up our car and headed west on Interstate 70 to Fort Collins, CO for the biennial U.S. Staff Conference with Campus Crusade for Christ. This conference is required for all full-time staff in the 43 U.S. ministries of Campus Crusade for Christ. It was an encouraging and refreshing week for us. We saw many friends and were challenged and stimulated through the meetings and seminars we attended.

Every Student

We spent the first week with over 2500 campus staff from across the United States. We were reminded over and over what the scope of our ministry is. We will not be content to reach only the students that are easy to reach or the students on campuses where we have full-time staff. It is our desire that each of the nearly 60 million college students throughout the world (14 million in the U.S.) would hear the message of Jesus Christ in an understandable way and have an opportunity to respond to that message by placing their faith in Him for eternal life. What this means is that we must constantly strive to be innovative in the approaches we take to reach students, since no one method of outreach will allow us to expose every student to the gospel.

The national director of the campus ministry, Steve Sellers, said, “We will not reach every student until we are willing to reach each student.” What he means is that if we as a campus ministry (and I as campus staff) are not willing to reach out to African-American students, international students, disabled students, or any other group of students, then we will not reach every student. Or, if we as staff at the University of Michigan are not willing to take time away from our primary ministry at Michigan, then we will not be able to reach students at places like Hillsdale College just a few miles from Ann Arbor. If we don’t reach out to each student, no matter what ethnic background, no matter what country, no matter what school, then we will never attain our goal of reaching every student in the world.

The only way we can reach every student is to recruit more workers to help us do that. A key source of workers are the students we are now working with. Just as Shelly and I chose as students at Ohio State to commit our lives to reaching people for Christ, many of the students we minister to now will choose to put aside their career goals and help us in fulfilling the Great Commission.

In order to recruit students to our ministry it is important to expose them to the overall ministry of Campus Crusade so that they might see how God is moving in our ministry and how they might play a part in it. One way we did this was by inviting 1200 students involved in our ministry to come and be a part of the national conference during one of the weekends. Our hope is that students will catch a vision for our ministry and will desire to help us in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Students Reaching the World

How is God using college students to reach the world for Christ? Four years ago, Crusade was able to expose 700,000 students to the gospel. Last year that number was up to 7,000,000!

There are currently 320 recent college graduates who are giving a year to reaching out to the lost. They have been able to start ministries at 21 new college campuses overseas. Please pray for the many students who are considering joining these teams next year.

Students are even breaking ground in places that have not had a Christian presence. In 1992 the first team of students went to Albania. They shared with a woman who came to know Christ. She then came on staff as the first national Albanian staff member! We heard from her at the conference. Praise God that He was able to use her and many Albanian churches in a unified effort to reach out to the Kosovar refugees during the recent crisis. Pray for students as they have the opportunity to take trips overseas – they can have an amazing impact on the world!

Prayer and Praise

Praise that everything is going well with Shelly’s pregnancy.

Praise for a refreshing and vision- enhancing time at the U.S. Staff Conference.

Praise for nearing the end of this initial support raising time.

Pray that we will finish our support before August 20.

Pray that God would prepare those students we will have the opportunity to meet and share the gospel with.

Pray that we would trust God as we begin our ministry this fall.

New Address

By the time our next newsletter comes out we will have moved, so we feel it is best to give you all of our updated information now. Please note that our e-mail address has changed as well.

www.ardle.org

Staff Account #0484633