This also means that we have quite a few prayer requests…

Please Pray For:

• Bobby’s hearing on May 22nd. We will be testifying on his behalf.
• Our travels this summer. We will be away from Orlando for family vacations, our national staff conference and for some support work. Pray for safety & sanity for all 3 of us.
• Our opportunity to buy the condo that we’ve been renting. Pray for wisdom in the decision. This would be wonderful for our continued outreach to our neighborhood.
• We’re hosting a brand-new small group for our church. It’s intended to be the beginning of an effort to reach this part of Orlando!
• The friend that visited us on Good Friday, that he would find the freedom Jesus offers from guilt, anxiety and past hurts.
• For Summer Cru at UCF which kicks off toward the end of June!

Praises:

Some of you saw our online update that we’d lost our conference housing unexpectedly. We found new housing!

Thanks for your prayers!

The campus year is officially over, but not without a fair amount of struggle. The question on the table this year largely revolved around the theme of sending: If we want to go beyond babysitting college students for a few years into the realm of equipping every graduate for a lifetime of personal ministry and kingdom influence, how does this change the “what, why and how” of our movement and how we measure success?

For the sake of brevity, I will spare you the long hours of debate and share possibly the most encouraging gauge I (Carrie) have seen. Accompanied by a host of incredible stories, this poster served as a year-end “Ebenezer” exercise — thus far the Lord has helped us! Each initial represents a small (or large!) victory our students or staff observed this year, in themselves or someone else. Praise the God who changes lives!

Ebenezer bingo?

One of the panels I went to at SXSW. 

In the picture are Dr Mae Jemison (astronaut), Dr Jill Tarter (scientist), and LeVar Burton (fictional astronaut).

Messin’ With Texas

Computational Science. Open Clouds. DIY API. 3D Printing. Nonprofit Social Media Management. UX of APIs. Inspiring Digital Natives. This is what my brain is still processing and digesting from my week at SXSW Interactive in Austin in March. The conference is a huge event, drawing more than 39,000 people this year from web developers, actors, marketers, entrepreneurs, astronauts (both real and fictional) and everything between.

It was a great time to refresh my “ideas box” for work. As I’m helping to develop what it will mean to partner with other ministries, it helps to learn what is working elsewhere and to add ideas to ponder. I’ve taken some time to condense what I learned into a report for my own good; to help me remember what I learned.

Risen Indeed

At the end of March we celebrated Fia’s second Easter (pictured) as well as a year living back in Florida.

Our 2013 “Easter Picture” taken in the same place as last year!

To celebrate the Resurrection we visited Bobby in jail. The good news is that his recent charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, and that he’s spending lots of time in the Word! The bad news is that he is still in jail, awaiting a probation hearing on the 22nd of this month. Continue praying!

We also invited a friend over to watch the “easter scenes” of the JESUS Film with us after several long conversations about why the message of Jesus is good news. He seems to be searching for meaning and love in his life, and it is fun to be challenged by an intelligent friend to explain what the Risen Christ means practically for us also!

Encouraging Numbers

Since launching our app in October and starting to launch our platform:

• The app will be installed for the 100,000th time sometime this week!
• “Play” has been pressed on one of our videos for the 10 MILLIONTH time!
• We’re averaging more than 55,000 video views every day.
• Our newest partner, YouVersion, has logged over 1,000,000 views since adding the JESUS Film to their apps in March.

JOSEPH VAN OS / GETTY IMAGES

A coworker recently shared this article with me which illustrates the opportunity and need that we’re aiming at:

More People Have Cell Phones Than Toilets, U.N. Study Shows

Out of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, six billion have access to mobile phones. Far fewer — only 4.5 billion people — have access to working toilets.

More people have cell phones than toilets!

That, there is a target audience!

My desk has collected a lot of stuff since my “First Day” post last year.

Since then, we’ve seen a lot happen. The app launched, I added a role within my team, and we’ve added our first three partnership ministries to our platform.

Today the JFM team had a meeting to discuss some encouraging things going on. I can’t discuss everything due to security issues as well as “not counting chicks before they’re hatched.” But here are some awesome news pieces:

• Today the app should cross the 65,000 installs line!
  • Most of them are not in the US!
• We’re currently averaging 60,000 views of our videos every day.
  • This is the equivalent of the enrollment of UCF where Carrie is working.
• Our newest partner, YouVersion, has logged over a half-million views since adding the JESUS Film to their app!

Imagine what the next year will bring, let alone the next two — the minimum amount that we suspect that we’ll spend in Orlando. God is working powerfully in the Jesus Film Project; on campus at UCF; at our church, Antioch 21; in our small group; in our neighborhood, Azalea Park (where we just renewed our lease); and in our own lives!

Thank you all again for your prayers and your support. We can’t do any of this without you!

Take a look at how we’re getting the word out!

Pipero?

Imagine you’re from Nigeria. You speak English and Nupe, the language of locals near the capital where you now live. Your grandmother, back in your hometown, usually speaks another language that you don’t know the name of. Since moving away to college you started following Jesu and want to talk about him with your grandmother when you visit over the break. You know that she’s never watched a movie and would be amazed to hear and see the story of Jesu for herself like you did when other students showed you the film last fall. But, how can you show it to her? She doesn’t speak English or Nupe, and there isn’t a television or a DVD player in her small village.

Pamo Ja

Students at the Pamo Ja conference pledging to serve as missionaries.

When we were on campus, we had a student conference every year just after Christmas. It was always great, but leaving so soon wasn’t our favorite. Well, imagine leaving on Christmas day to head to Nigeria for a conference that starts on the 27th. That’s just what a couple of Jayson’s teammates did. They spent a week interacting with students from all over Africa and introducing them to an app called Kolo Africa built by a partner ministry.

Kolo allows you to browse to a list of languages spoken in any given country. When you click through the list of languages, it plays a single sentence from the JESUS Film. When you hear the appropriate language, you can select it and play any of the available videos in that language, even if you can’t read it. It’s a solution that Jayson’s team never would have thought of, but this partner saw a gap and bridged it.

Pusher

Since moving to JFM, I’ve jokingly called myself a “pixel pusher,” designing web pages and other media to get the word of our app out. In December, I added another role, “Platform Partnership Manager” or “platform pusher” as I like to call it.

What this means is that as we connect with ministries like the Kolo Group, I will be the one who knows the system and helps them use it more effectively to communicate the Gospel.

This role allows me to exercise both my strategic and technical skills to make the best use of our resources — something I’ve been itching to do for a while now. Thanks for being behind us!

Pray For:

• Jayson is still getting his brain wrapped around the technical specifics of the Jesus Film Media platform. Pray for the Spirit to help him ‘connect the dots.’
• Pray for Bobby (“Brad” previously), things have been up and down. But, the Lord is working and continuing to draw him to dependence on Christ. Check out the previous two posts website for more. Email Jayson if you need the password for the protected one.
• We really like our apartment and we feel blessed that we’re going to be able to sign a lease for another year!
• Carrie’s team at UCF & student leaders as they test out a new structure for Bible study and discipleship. Change rarely comes with out bumps!

The short version:

Bobby is back in jail. We still are standing behind him. While he’s not without fault in the situation, I am convinced that he did not do what he is accused of. We are fairly certain that the situation was a manipulation by his ex to get back at him.

The LONG version:

As I was getting ready for work, Carrie got a call from Bobby’s daughter’s mother. She and Bobby were fighting and she said that she was afraid. Carrie kept telling her that if she felt unsafe that she should get in her car and come to our place. She could hear Bobby (clearly angry) telling her to get out of his place and to never come back.

I was concerned enough about the whole thing that I swung by his place on my way to work, but her car was gone so I didn’t stop in.

Carrie talked with both Bobby and his ex during the course of the day, and Bobby came over for dinner (his first hot meal since last week.)

In the 9 months or so that we’ve observed and gotten to know Bobby and the people around him, it’s become clear that his ex is a manipulator and (to be blunt) a liar. She tells people what they need to hear to get the on her side so she can use them. Throughout the day, her stories seemed increasingly suspect to Carrie. And she mentioned calling the police.

When I picked up Bobby after work, he was clearly distressed. As he did his laundry at our place and we ate some venison (thanks to Pennsylvania family!) he told us his side. His ex had a falling out with her mother who stopped subsidizing her life because of her drug use. She and their daughter had no place to stay, so Bobby allowed them to stay temporarily. Without getting into details, it quickly went south, and Bobby had had enough. He told her Sunday night that she had to leave. He would pack her stuff and she could get it the next morning.

When she showed up she was (as usual) in a rage and demanded that he take her stuff downstairs to her car for her. When he came back up, she had a pair of scissors and was slashing some of his stuff. He got the scissors away from her and told her to get out. This is when she called us, yelling “He’s trying to stab me with scissors!” She left, but not before scratching his face and hitting him with her phone.

After she left, so did Bobby — he had job interviews and a meeting with his Probation officer. A neighbor later told him that the police had been there looking for him, and he wasn’t sure what to do.

We decided that after dinner we would go back to his place and tell the police that he was there now and wasn’t trying to evade them.

The police talked to both of us then asked to talk to Bobby alone. I stood outside and prayed; while we were waiting for the officers to show up we had listened to a Charles Spurgeon devotional (it was talking about the Refuge Cities in ancient Israel, where inadvertent offenders could flee for mercy). He was afraid and was on the verge of tears as we talked.

When the police officer came out, he told me that they were going to take him in on a charge of Aggravated Assault With A Deadly Weapon (the scissors). They admitted that they were simply were choosing to believe her side of the story because he wasn’t there when they looked for him earlier. They did say it was a positive that he called them and that they didn’t have to track him down.

So, for now Bobby is in the Orange County Jail again.

I took the key to his place (it has to be vacated by Wednesday) so that when he gets out he’ll still have clothes and won’t have to track down his birth certificate, social security card and everything else from who-knows-where before restarting the job hunt.

Like those who fled to Cities of Refuge that God established in Deuteronomy, Bobby is not COMPLETELY without fault. It was a bad decision to let his ex back into his life and home again. It was not the last option for his daughter; her grandparents would have cared for her regardless. His anger management is still an issue and he should have called the police himself after everything she did.

Please continue to pray for Bobby as he still desires to follow God and believes he has a plan. The money that people gave to care for him (THANK YOU!) will still be set aside to help him out. And, if (God, please forbid) this means that Bobby is incarcerated for a long time, we will set it aside to help out his precious daughter.

Pray for us, too. This severely affected my ability to sleep last night. Carrie and I are both struggling to love Bobby’s ex the way that Jesus calls us to. All of the ‘revenge’ Psalms are very close to mind this morning, and it’s hard work to remember that SHE is not the enemy and to love her also, in spite of mental, emotional and spiritual illness (Think Romans 1). The words of a social worker friend come to mind: “When you choose relationship with her, you have to know you WILL get hurt.” And yet, Christ was more than hurt by and for the Whelpleys while we were still sinners… (think Romans 2:1).

If anyone has any questions or advice, feel free to comment, call, email, or message us.

We’ll continue to share prayer requests as they come up!

Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy;
I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
Jeremiah 31:13

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