Jayson & Carrie Whelpley

This week shouldn’t be nearly as busy as last week, but will still be full for Carrie and I.

Today (like most Mondays) is our planning day, preparing for Bible studies, ‘Cru’ meetings, appointments and beginning the week with the Lord. We’ll spend a lot of today at a desk or in front of a computer screen preparing for the week ahead.

To be honest, I don’t know Carrie’s full schedule for this week, but I can ask you to be praying for some specifics for me…

Tomorrow I’ll be in Butler for a Bible study at a community college – pray that more students would come out and that God would lead me to students taht will be leaders there.

Wednesday, as usual, will be a little busier and longer. At noon I need to be up to Edinboro to meet with a non-traditional student that used to work with Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship in the Erie area to discuss how to work together to reach Edinboro. I’ll also be meeting with the new pastor at Edinboro United Methodist to meet him and see how we and the church might be resources for one another. After a break to have dinner with my mom while she’s in the area we have Cru (the main meeting) where I’m sure students will share their experiences from this past weekend doin relief work in New Orleans.

Thursday has me in Erie for a few hours and then Pittsburgh for some more after that. After continuing a Bible study on God’s plan of salvation throughout scripture at Penn State Erie, the whole team is headed down to Pitt to get students to start thinking of summer projects for 2006 (yes, even with it being more than 6 months away).

Pray for safety, effectiveness and God’s leading on our lips.

Carrie and I worked 15 hours yesterday beginning with our 8:30 AM prayer meeting with the team.

After we got home, we prepared for our day in Edinboro and Erie. My itinerary included meeting with the EUP Cru faculty advisor for lunch and discussing some things about the ministry and ‘catching up.’ There’s a possibility that we’re going to start a group there to help the Christian professors feel a bit more connected – I’ll keep you all updated as we know things for sure. After that appointment I headed up to Penn State Behrend to meet with 2 professors there that are the faculty advisors for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (the only Christian group that I know about on that campus) – they seemed to be very on board with CCC starting a movement there, I’m going to try to meet with the IV staff next week.

While I was at Behrend, I ran into a guy who my mom and step-dad used to go to church with before they moved to North Carolina. He works for the post office and I’m pretty sure he was delivering the mail to the university. He mentioned that there was a young adults’ Bible study with their church and that two of the people attending are students at Behrend and suggested that I get in contact with the guy who is leading it (who also happens to be the guy that I believe led my parents to Christ).

I headed back to Edinboro for an appointment that Carrie and I had with the elders’ board at a church that two of our student leaders attend.

While I was in Erie, Carrie was getting stood up by 3 out 5 appointments and in the meantime met a that we were able to talk with for about an hour and a half about faith issues – he was open about his faith and ended up asking us what we believed which gave us an open door to share the Gospel. He’s still searching, but he has a more complete picture of the Christian faith than he did that morning.

At the church board meeting we discussed partnering with them in two ways: Carrie and I are still in need of about 7% of our financial support and were asking them to consider that; also, we value church partnerships to reach colleges very much and were establishing a working relationship with them to help us all better reach Edinboro’s student population.

Afterwards, Carrie and I (along with one of the EUP student leaders) sat in on a group discussion about the issue of homosexuality on campus and what it’s like to be one. We have had a number of chances to meet members of the LGBT (defenition) group at Edinboro and wanted to begin to make in-roads to the group through showing that we and Christ truly care about them regardless of their sexuality. It was a good time to understand their perspectives on campus life and being some possible friendships with the students and faculty there.

Finally it was time for CRU which was great – there were a number of new students this week (as there have been every week this semester. Next week we’ll be back in the University Center after being “banishied” to Dearborn Hall’s TV Lobby (a dorm). The student president spoke about sharing our faith through relationships and did a great job complete with a story about a long-time friend.

I hope the redesign tickles everyone’s fancy. I’ve worked hard on this and an very pleased with it. Just so you know, when you navigate to another page, to get back to the main “Blog” page, click on our names up top!

Explore. Enjoy.

Hey everyone,

He (the student activities director) didn’t give me much of a chance to talk, but he said what he can do is put us under re-organizational status, which means we can meet, but we can’t participate (as an official organization that is) in other campus events, or do fund-raising or anything like that. We have to send him a letter explaining why we didn’t meet the Sept. 30th deadline, then he will ‘check with policy’ and see what he can do, and get back to us then. He also told me they basically gave us multiple opportunities to do this, that they started telling us last April that we needed to fill out the form, along with contacting our advisor
several times.

So I guess for now we’ll meet in Dearborn, until this stuff gets straightened out. Should I write the letter, or should staff, what do you think? Thanks guys!

-Jen

Jen is the student Vice-President of the group at Edinboro, she has done an excellent job doing the footwork to get these things done. Pray for our continued ministry there and that students would not be discouraged from this.

As of the beginning of October, Edinboro University has revoked CCC’s status as a recognized group. To clarify, this is not a case of the University discriminating against us.

At the beginning of every school year every recognized student organization has to turn in paperwork confirming that they are still an active group – the paperwork is due on September 30th.

On September 30th I received this email from the faculty advisor Dr. Hurd:

David,

The Campus Crusade for Christ has not sent in their paper work. The Organization Registration form. It is due today. After today they will be inactive for a semester. Please get this paper work in. Thank you
Xxxxxx Xxxxx (name removed by me)

So, needless to say all the running around was not done that day, it was just not possible. Last Wednesday, when we went to go into our room to meet the doors were locked and we were not allowed to enter because we are no longer an active group and therefore are not allowed to reserve rooms. We met out on the basketball courts and had a great time of worship and prayer – but the situation is obviously less than ideal.

As I type I had and idea of a possible remedy and one of the students leaders is following up on it. Please pray that the Lord will do whatever He is intending through this and that our ministry at Edinboro will be advanced through this!

Edit:Cru at Edinboro is not the only organization that lost their active status – 50 out of 120 student organizations did not turn their paperwork in on time. That is more than 40%!