Jayson & Carrie Whelpley

Back!

“Where are you from? What’s your major? Where are you from…” This time of year, this is the sound that rings back when your head hits the pillow.  Classes in the District have officially started, along with all that goes with it — tables at club fairs, brightly colored fliers, free stuff, new faces and the ever-present aroma of cheap burgers from orientation events.  Today at Georgetown, the music on the quad from a huge beginning-of-the-year church service for freshman and a few lingering parents reminds last spring’s party ground that it is time to get serious again.

Georgetown, along with American University, will probably be one of our strongest movements this fall, as we have become part of the Campus Ministry communities there and have freedom to meet more students and hold events.  Please pray that these relationships with other groups will only grow and that God would show us how to contribute as team players to the good reputation of Jesus.  It is the body of Christ (not just Cru) that is able to reach the whole city.

Connecting the Dots

September is always stirring with transition, but this year even more.  Between the reality of a much smaller staff team and so many of last year’s students leaving town for various reasons, it is a perfect time to zoom out to focus on who is here.  Due partly to a national push within Campus Crusade to mobilize Cru alumni and partly to an accidental bunch of potential volunteers, we’ve been spending our time in between the club fairs trying to connect some of the dots here.

What could it look like if a city full of Type-A twenty-somethings caught a vision for reaching out to the students around them? If the graduating seniors from thriving Cru movements like Virginia Tech and James Madison University had a clear place to invest themselves when they moved back home to our doorstep? We’re praying to find out. By Fall Retreat (October 9-11), we hope to have a small army of 20 volunteers, trained and moving toward a clear vision.

In the Wings

One of the advantages of living in a high-profile city is that you can get more press — Washington, DC has been on a list of the Top 10 priority cities within our organization for several years now.  As a result, two other metro staff teams, one from Chicago and the other from St. Louis, have volunteered to come here for a few days this October just to give lift to what we’re doing.  You may remember our incoming spring breakers two years ago — this is a big deal! Pray for wisdom as we think through the best way to put them to use, and we’ll keep you posted!

Grace & Peace,
Jayson & Carrie

Pray for:

Praise God for a summer of excellent training and sufficient funding for it! Thanks everyone!

Pray that the several non-Christians who’ve been investigating our groups would stick around.

Pray that our team and students will stay in good health through the fall flu season & that the presence of the H1N1 virus here would not keep people from our Fall Retreat.

Pray that our two new staff would be able to return from fundraising quickly to turn our 3-person team into 5!

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” – B. Franklin

The sign that said that caught students’ attention too. On April 24, we spent about 10 hours at Georgetown University for Georgetown Day, the campus’ annual excuse for an all-day block party on the quad complete with bands, free food and about 10,000 people. Georgetown Day sees a lot of alcohol consumed by students (as we got to campus at 10:30 a.m., the liquor store’s line was out the door).  Beer is on many minds already; God, maybe not.

Needless to say, our table about beer, God and happiness provoked some interesting conversations. With a survey about the Ben Franklin quote, we requested thoughts on God, the nature of love and happiness, and even the meaning of Jesus’ death. Below is a quote from a corresponding website, BeerIsProof.org:

“To Ben the issue was simple. Simple enough that a cold beer from the local pub was proof that God loved him. What about you? Consider laughter, music, sunsets at the beach and the miraculous combination of chocolate and peanut butter. Do these things suggest that the genius behind it all wants us to be happy?”

Without endorsing drinking, we managed to have over 100 conversations and at least one person who said that he wanted to invite Christ into his life.  Apparently anything can start a conversation about Jesus.

Go big or go home – and bring someone with you.

The semester is over. Students have moved home, gone to their summer projects or graduated and started “real life.” Last week at an end-of-the year retreat to help us look back before we look forward, we named as our greatest “wins” things that happened in our homes and extended “off hours” hangout times – out on the quad until midnight, at our place drinking tea over movies and life discussions, at campfires at the staff guys’ house, or at gatherings sharing home-cooked meals on couches rather than in fluorescent-lit meeting rooms facing front.

Year Two has seen God answer our prayer for genuine community marked by transformation.  Internationals, skeptics of all varieties and even a few Jewish students have hung around to consider the claims of Jesus. Things have come into the open that normally don’t.  We haven’t seen the masses come to meetings, but lives are changing. Praise God!

Lean, mean and on the scene!

This year we had a ready-made community of 9 staff and interns and three apartments to invite students into.  With the close of the year comes (hopefully temporary) end of this fun chapter. This fall, it will be just 3 of us. Some of the interns will be fundraising and going elsewhere, one is moving on to pursue a masters and the other couple will be moving to an established ministry where their gifts will be a better fit.  Every change comes with pros and cons, but we’re excited to see what the year will bring! Pray that God would fight our battles for us, and provide a way to move closer into the city.

Pray for:

• As we hope to move from Arlington into DC at some point, pray that we’d find affordable housing that can fit lots of students.
• This summer we’ll be taking classes again – this time to help us learn how to lead a team and structure a movement. We’re pining for summer project but recognize our need for training.
• We’ll be working on developing a larger support base in DC this summer before and after our assignment, pray for contacts and perseverance in that work.

Hello friends and ministry partners!

I wanted to let you all know that with this prayer letter from the end of October we have redesigned our prayer letter to be smaller to download as a PDF, it’s less than 2Mb. You can download it here.

Also, I wanted to ask for prayer from all of you. As of this week I am going to step back for 2-3 days a week from my Regional IT role and work on shoring up our support base. We know that the financial “crisis” is affecting everyone and we’ve seen that in the amount of financial support that is now consistently coming in comparison with a year ago. We’ve seen some rather large and unexpected gifts that have been keeping us afloat, but like I said they were unexpected and it would be more responsible of us to be sure that there is the support base there. At the same time, those gifts have seemed to be assurances from God that He is indeed caring for us and is aware of our needs – and He provides for them in abundance!

For those of you who prayed for my personal retreat, it went wonderfully as you’ll read below. I was able to stay in a very nice log house by myself (under the “watchful eye” of neighbors who happen to also be financial supporters) and center my heart on the Lord. If you have any questions about it please comment on the post (there is a link at the bottom of it that says something about comments).

Thank you all for your prayers! Here’s the update letter:

Fall Retreat

This year marked a huge jump in numbers for our annual Fall Retreat! Since the DC Cru movements are all still small and with the Cru group at the University of Maryland, but we also added two other schools – Towson University and Salisbury University. With these additions the total size of the retreat doubled from just over 100 last year to more than 220 this year! In addition to the total numbers we from DC brought 5 times more students than last year – we went from 2 to 12!

The retreat included a lot of powerful things – worship (two of our students helped lead in music), teaching (the DC team, including Carrie and I, taught seminars on a number of subjects), prayer (Saturday night was a “concert of prayer” that included two hours of musical worship and focused prayer for our schools and our world)… and the Norovirus! Two days before it was discovered that a Georgetown cafeteria had somehow spread it to a number of students and faculty, one of those students came to our retreat and began “erupting” as soon as he arrived… only one more person ended up getting sick – thank God!

We had a number of students who have not begun following Christ that came from our schools and experienced the Gospel in a community and saw what real worship and prayer can look like. Pray that the messages given by the speaker and our staff would stick in students’ hearts and minds to draw them closer to Christ even as the conference fades from their memories.

Personal Retreat

Two weeks after the Fall Retreat I (Jayson) followed God’s lead and took a week-long retreat to get alone to pray and hear from God. Over this past semester I have had some adjustments to my position that has taken some responsibilities from my plate that I was enjoying, but it was intended to free me up to focus on campus and the CruTech responsibilities that I’ve taken on in the past year. In this I have had a hard time giving up things that I was falsely believing gave me worth and value in life and ministry.

The personal retreat was wonderful. I was able to listen to recorded sermons, pray, read, hike and be alone with God and was able to visit with another minister that I respect a bunch who helped me work through some of these things. In the end I came to a point where I realized that God has called me to this position at this time for a specific reason and that I need to trust that He is working in my life exactly what He is intending. As I have returned to “normal” life I am still wrestling with what this means in my day-to-day work and ministry, but I keep coming back to God’s goodness and sovereignty as the places where I am able to rest and know that this is right.

While I have a responsibility to God (and all of you who pray for us and contribute financially to our ministry) to steward my time well and make the most of every opportunity; my value is not based in my ministry or what I do, but on Christ and His work in my life and who and what He has declared me to be.

A Family Passing

This past weekend marked a sad/happy occasion in Carrie’s family. Her “pappy” Don Regi passed away peacefully in his sleep at home with family all around. He was diagnosed just a week-and-a-half ago with brain cancer after going to the hospital with pneumonia. Pappy was known all around that area as the epitome of the strong silent type, but also as a great friend. As the casket rode from the funeral to gravesite we passed the car dealership where he worked for 45 years, I have to admit that I teared up as we saw that every employee was standing in a line outside to pay their respects even though it was about 33° and raining.

While it has been sad for us to say goodbye, it’s more than happy to know that he now sees  his Savior face-to-face, not to mention his wife (“Mammy”) who passed away two years ago on November 4. God is good, even (perhaps especially) in all of this.

Grace & Peace,
Jayson & Carrie

Please Pray For:

• Our Team – as the restructuring of the team continues, pray that we would all find our place in roles that God has indeed intended us for and that we would encourage each other and find our peace in Christ, not in our work or title.
• DC Cru movements – pray that we would begin reaching the “critical mass” necessary to see some of our movements begin to become multiplying and self-sustaining (students doing evangelism and discipleship by themselves).

Updates! – May 28, 2008

As this year has wrapped up, we wanted to take some time and look back at past letters so we can update you on things that we’ve asked you to pray for in the past and celebrate!

Our Team

Our staff team is in place for next year – it looks like we’ll have 9! Returning will be the two of us, Jake, Jacqueline, and Rebecca; joining us will be Tom (from Penn State), Katie (one of Carrie’s girls in Ocean City, MD), Stephanie (a Western PA-er), Josh (from Radford) and Ben (another first-year intern). We also have a volunteer – Alex who recently moved here after finishing at Michigan Tech. (Serendipitously, we cross paths again after meeting by chance in New Orleans last year!) Pray that we would find close, affordable housing for all of our teammates, and that they would keep focused during fundraising.

Former Students

We often share stories of students in our letters. There are lots of updates, but here are a few highlights:

• Brett – one of my guys from summer project last year. He has now graduated and is headed to seminary very soon to pursue his dream of being a pastor.

• Randy – featured in one of our prayer letters 2 summers ago and was part of the group of Slippery Rock guys meeting at our house last school year. Randy has now finished with college and will be volunteering full time with the Western PA team this coming school year as he prepares to come on staff.

• Nikki – a student leader from Edinboro who came to Ocean City last summer; she’s headed to Australia on summer project this year to take part in the campus ministry in Melbourne.

• Heather – one of Carrie’s summer project girls from 2006; she’s finished school in WV and will be living out her faith in her field of study at an internship at the Smithsonian here in DC.

Ocean City, MD guys

If you remember my lament from last year about this time, there is often a major shortage of men coming on summer projects. This year in Ocean City, MD that is not the case! While Carrie and I won’t be there this summer, we’re very excited to announce that the guys will be crammed into the project housing this year. The 15 guys that arrived yesterday are the largest number of student men that the project has seen, some coming the whole way from the west coast! Pray for a pivotal summer, for these men as well as the rest of the students and our staff friends who are there now.

Georgetown

For those of you who get our online updates in between prayer letters, you know that we had asked for prayer in becoming an official “associated ministry” at Georgetown University. After nine months of praying for favor, building relationships, and starting one off-campus study, we finally had an interview with the Ministry Council. Your prayers have been answered! Carrie received an email today inviting her to serve as an official member of the council starting in August. This will allow us to move toward an active on-campus movement this influential DC school! Pray that we’d have wisdom to match this responsibility.

Beulah Land Baptist

One of the most exciting updates is the fact that Beulah Land Baptist church has laid the foundation to rebuild their church! If you don’t remember, Beulah Land was the church in the 9th Ward of New Orleans that our team of 50+ Western PA students and staff helped to gut over Spring Break of 2006; we were sad last year to visit and see that they still had to tear the church down, but they are rebuilding now! They are looking to be the very first church in the Lower 9th Ward to reopen. One of our Western PA teammates was able to be in NOLA for the ground breaking ceremony as our representative. Pray that Beulah Land would represent Christ well to a (still) broken community.

Your Partnership!

Carrie and I have been honored to be part of God’s hands and feet in a number of places in the past 5 years on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ (and we hope to continue for years to come). But we consider every one of these “success stories” to be yours, too, as our partners in the Gospel. Through your various types of support, we have been upheld and empowered, and for that we thank you greatly!
On that note, we would love to see you in person as we make our summer rounds. For those in PA, here’s a few chances to see us and say hi. We’ll just be hanging out visiting with whoever stops in!

• Erie, PA – Friday, June 13, Panera Bread on Upper Peach St., 5-8pm

• Grove City, PA – Monday, June 16, Prime Outlets Food Court (South End), 6-9pm

• Central PA – we’ll be over your way later in the summer. We’ll keep you posted!

Grace & Peace,
Jayson & Carrie

Please Pray For:

• Our travels this summer as we head to Erie, Orlando, Central PA, and back. Pray that we will be safe and well-rested with no car troubles, and energized by the four Bible classes we’ll be taking.

• Our time securing the necessary support to be in a healthy financial spot in Washington DC’s high cost of living.

• Our health. Both of us are getting over about a week of sickness (bronchitis, allergies, cold, flu, etc.). Pray that this would be the end of our health problems for the summer.

• Students’ summer growth. Pray that as they are away from their spiritual communities that they will still find people and places at home to direct them toward a closer walk with Christ.

Carrie and I at our Annual Fellowship Dinner

The PDF of this prayer letter is available here.

The meeting went very well. Carrie was able to talk about specific plans that we hope to work with next year and I was able to talk about the ways that Campus Crusade for Christ has grown and matured corporately since they were asked to leave over a decade ago.

We will not know if we’ve been accepted as an “associated ministry” until May 28th at the earliest, but a good sign was that as we were wrapping up the meeting 3 of the board members said, “I really liked what you had to say,” (or something similar) to us.

Please continue to pray for our chance to minister to the students of Georgetown University and pray that we will learn where best we fit in with the other ministries that are established there.