Family Life, which is a ministry under the umbrella of Campus Crusade for Christ, is offering it’s Weekend to Remember Conferences available at $69/person, almost half off the regular rate. This price is available to our family member and our ministry partners. Jody and I along with Jody’s parents attended one of these years ago and loved it! I highly recommend them. I also recommend bringing your friends, heck get a group together and go!
They have a ton of locations all over the U.S. For more info check out their site. If you’re interested in send me an email and I’ll give you the promotional code.
We’re back in Bozeman after spending January in the Portland area. Technically our job is fully focused on launching the Portland ministry, but with a house that needs to sell, it’s long distance work for us for at least a little bit longer.
So right now our days are full of meetings, letters and phone calls to expand our ministry partner team. As well as meetings, conference calls, emails and strategic planning for the Portland ministry. We’re itching to get moving with the Portland ministry, but we’re also thanking the Lord for this time of laying the groundwork for a new day of ministry in Portland.
Please continue to pray for our sanity as we’re stuck in the limbo for the next couple of months. We’re doing really well personally, but we continue to need patience and trust in the Lord’s timing. Also, pray for the right buyer to fall in love with our house soon! We have an open house on Valentines day, so who knows!
Lastly, pray for the Portland ministry. The potential is off the charts for God to do something unique on the campuses in the city. Every day we hear from someone who is excited that we’re coming. We’re believing God to reach the campus for Christ on the way to seeing the city and the world transformed!
We’ve been in Portland area for the last 3 weeks. We’ve had some great times catching up with some of our ministry partners in the area as we work to expand our support team. We’re incredibly thankful for the many people that pray for us and give financially so that we can step foot on campuses and tell students about Christ. Our hearts overflow with gratitude to the Lord for his provision for us through many of you!
The last few weeks have been full of meetings as well as exploring the Portland metro area trying to figure out where we’d like to live. If you’re interested in some nuts and bolts of our relocation, check out a post from a series I started on my leadership blog over here.
Please continue to pray for our transition. We’re doing really well, but feeling unsettled in both Portland and Bozeman. We’re just waiting for our house to sell and then we’ll move full steam ahead. Please pray that God would lift that burden.
If you’re like us then you’re praying for the nation of Haiti in their hour of need and wondering what you can do to help.
You can contribute directly to relief work in the area through Global Aid Network (GAiN), the relief and development arm of Campus Crusade for Christ. GAiN already has containers with 1 million meals in it in Haiti and eight more containers of food and critically needed supplies ready to ship to Haiti. GAiN’s primary need at the moment is financial resources to distribute the goods they have to the people of Haiti.
This years conference was an amazing time in the Word, worshiping, a day of outreach, fellowship and training times. Our newsletter and the video below do a great job telling more about the conference. Some other highlights of our time there were:
- Our new team was able to all be together for the first time. We are all in transition in some way this spring but it was fun to spend time together, talk about the future ministry of Portland and pray for the Lord to begin moving in new ways in the city.
- We had our first team time with students from the Portland area that came to the conference. It was encouraging that there were 4 students because there has been no staff on the campuses for almost 2 years now but also a bit disheartening because there are 100,000 students in the city who need to be reached. There is much work to be done and we are trusting God to raise up hundreds of students who want to be involved in the ministry and serve the Lord in the city in the future.
Portland Metro Students
We had students text in one word or short descriptions of what they thought of the conference. Here are some of the responses we received:
We just finished our annual Winter Conference in Portland, Oregon. It was a fabulous time of calling students (and staff) to venture into the deep with Jesus (Luke 5). Check out the final video for the conference…it gives you a great picture of what the conference was like.
After an amazing Christmas in Bozeman, we’re hitting the road for January. We’re loading the bags as I write this and we’ve got some good house-sitters lined up for our house in Bozeman. (Pray that it sells soon!)
First stop will be our winter conference in Portland, Oregon, where us and 700 of our friends will gather in the Portland Convention Center to worship, learn and party in the New Year! 95 students from MSU are joining us! I’m teaching a seminar on transitioning to life after college as well as helping with some video production.
Next (Jan 2-8th) we’ll spend time in Prineville, Oregon visiting some of you! If you have time and are interested in touching base with us, please let us know
Finally, we have a couple housesitting gigs in Portland untill Feb 3rd, where we’ll be raising support, setting up some things for the Portland ministry and trying to figure out where we want to live. If you’re in the area, we’d love to meet with you!
As we wrap up our time at Montana State University and do some end of the semester evaluating, we feel incredibly grateful to have seen our ministry grow from 60 students involved (10 years ago) to where it is now with 37 small groups across campus and 300-400 students attending our weekly meeting! We’re sending students all over the world to serve him and it’s a joy to know that we’re part of God’s redemptive story for the world. What is happening in this small college town matters!
It’s bitter sweet to say goodbye to our staff team and the students involved here, but God has been so good to us here that we can’t help but worship God for who he is and give thanks to him.
Please pray for us over the next few months:
Pray our house would sell in Bozeman
Pray for new ministry partners as we raise additional support for our move to the city
Pray for all of our travel to Oregon and back over the coming months
Pray for the perfect living situation for us in Portland
Pray for the details of launching a new ministry would be directing by the Lord
Pray for us as we serve at our Winter Conference Dec 28th-Jan 2. Pray for the 100 students that are attending from MSU to experience God in a fresh way too.
So the cat is officially out of the bag…we’re moving to Portland, Oregon!
A few months ago we were challenged to move to Portland and help lead our campus ministry in the Portland area. We wrestled with this decision for a long time and finally felt like God was asking to go. This was an incredible lesson in caring more about obedience to our God than our comfort. We absolutely love Bozeman, the ministry here and surrounding area. It’s going to be super hard to leave. That being said, the Lord is causing our hearts to be more and more excited about moving to Portland.
The reality is that there are over 100K students in the Portland area and barely anyone working to give students a chance to say yes to Christ. We’re excited to put together a healthy staff team and build students movements across the city that will change lives and change the city on the way to reaching the world for Christ. You can read our most recent newsletter for more info on this decision and how we intend to stay connected to Montana State.
Please pray for us as we labor at for our last semester at MSU and begin the transition to Portland this spring! Stay tuned for more details of our move.
Raft the Yellowstone River outreach. 120 students attended! Tons of spiritual conversations were had, and many students got plugged into lasting relationships.
We were both in college when we discovered what it really meant to walk with the Lord and made the decision to walk with Christ daily. The love of God and His plan for the world gripped our hearts and compelled us to go to the mission field. Today more than ever we’re convinced that [...]more →
We’re back in Bozeman after spending January in the Portland area. Technically our job is fully focused on launching the Portland ministry, but with a house that needs to sell, it’s long distance work for us for at least a little bit longer.
We’ve had some great times catching up with some of our ministry partners in the area as we work to expand our support team. We’re incredibly thankful for the many people that pray for us and give financially so that we can step foot on campuses and tell students about Christ. Our hearts overflow with gratitude to the Lord for his provision for us through many of you!
We’re loading the bags as I write this and we’ve got some good house-sitters lined up for our house in Bozeman. (Pray that it sells soon!)
More of us!