Fia has learned how to smile!

Changes, Changes Everywhere

In the past 8 weeks everything has changed – well, just about everything. Our jobs, our family, our location, our organization’s name. Everything except the God that has led us here and His calling on our lives.

And not a Wink to Sleep

The biggest change happened on June 9th. Our beautiful daughter Sofia (or “Fia”) was born at 2:20pm after 26 hours at the hospital. Since then it’s been a roller-coaster ride. Eight days later we had packed up our apartment in Orlando and left to drive to Carrie’s parents’ home in Pennsylvania with a stop-over at Jayson’s parents’ house in North Carolina. A piece of advice — avoid 1,000-mile road trips with a 1-week-old.

In the past 7 weeks we’ve struggled to get Fia to nurse and gain weight. This affected our summer plans – the biannual staff conference is going on as I type, but we were granted an exemption due to these unforeseen difficulties. There was good news at today’s appointment; she’s up to a sturdy 8 lbs and the 6th percentile!

All Tribes Both Great and Small

In our May letter, we mentioned that Jayson will be working with the Jesus Film Project at our headquarters in Orlando. The past few weeks have given much clarity to the picture of his new job.
In the past 30 years Campus Crusade for Christ has translated the Jesus Film into almost 1,200 languages. It has been (through the work of CCC and other organizations) viewed more than 6.3 billion times. It’s is the goal of Jayson’s team to enable the next 6.3 billion to happen in the next 10 years.

The primary focus of Jayson’s new team is the growing mass of people connected to the internet around the world. A 2008 study concluded that India had 81 million people on the internet; further studies estimate that number to increase to between 237 and 276 million by 2015. If you consider India along with China, Indonesia, Russia and Brazil (representing 45% of the world’s population) – the number grows to 1.2 billion people by 2015, more than three times the number of internet users in the US and Japan combined!

The demographics of the world are changing as well. Each week more than 11 million people around the world are moving into cities – that’s the equivalent of the entire New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas each month! In cities they’ll encounter media and film as well as new ideas, cultures and faiths. This is where we’re aiming.

As the number and quality of Jesus Film Project resources continues to increase, our goal is to engage the spiritual journey of billions of people immediately before and after their choice to follow Christ. In the coming months, I’ll try to feature some of them on our website Whelpley.org.

Campus Crusade for Christ will be known as "Cru" in the US.

Rime and Reasons

The other big news is Campus Crusade for Christ’s name change. Beginning in 2012, Campus Crusade for Christ inside the United States will become known simply as “Cru”. (Internationally, very few of our ministries still go by our current name anyway, most have chosen Agape, Power to Change or something else.)

In the US, our name has become a liability. As our leaders did due diligence in considering a change, they found that 20% of people who say they are willing to have conversations about Jesus declined to do so when they heard our name. That’s 1 in 5 people who are willing to talk about our Savior who are turned off by what we call ourselves! This can not be.

We have changed our name because we want Jesus Christ to be glorified. Since the announcement, some commentators have accused us of being ashamed of the name of Christ – we are not. Every part of this choice is so that more people will be able to hear Jesus’ name in conversations built on trust and friendship. We’ve been told we need to “take a stand for Christ,” but mere stand-taking is for Pharisees, moving forward with the Gospel is what Jesus has called us to. Just having our Savior’s title in our name is setting the bar too low – it is in action that we desire to be faithful in bringing people to worship of Jesus Christ.

Please, rest assured – we (personally and corporately) are still completely sold out for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are pursuing all to bring glory and honor to His name! We have not changed who we are – merely our name. “A rose by any other name…”

Pray For

• Sofia’s continued health and growth and for her feedings to get easier.
• Our time raising support. We must be at 100% before moving back to Orlando.
• The negative media coverage of our name, that it would somehow serve to glorify Jesus according to Paul’s prayer in Philippians 1:8.

Floridians!

As of last Wednesday, the Whelpleys are legal Floridians (even if Jayson likes to have fun with his license)! Thanks to some above-and-beyond-type friends (thanks, Heralds!), we’re shipped and settled in a spacious two-bedroom place that’s ours for the year. The surplus of toll roads and strip malls will take some getting used to, but make a worthy trade for a breathtaking sky and an extra growing season to play in the community garden. As always, let us know if you’re coming to town — we have a bed to make for you now! For those who follow on Twitter and Facebook, the dog is gone.

Stinters!

On arrival, we were intercepted promptly by Campus Crusade’s “Lake Hart Stint” leadership team who oversees our development and helps the 45 adults in our program and their 26 kids to bond with each other and God. This group of shepherds goes to great lengths to provide us with regular one-on-one coaching, small process groups, and guest speakers who have already probed the depths of such topics as forgiveness, contemplative prayer, and desert faith. Despite what you’d guess of a group converging from 10 countries, our 2010 group has, according to these leaders, already connected more socially than they’ve ever seen this early on! With Jayson here, is this really surprising?

GenX.5-ers?

Many sources mark “Generation X” as ranging from 1961-81 and the “Millennials” as 1980-2000. What does this say of two border kids born in late1980? On one hand, we may relate to more aspects of American culture. On the other hand, we also earned somewhat obsolete degrees in fields that changed radically just after we left: for Carrie in art, the digital revolution; for Jayson in communications, online social networking. Still, both of us have been refreshed by operating in our fields again, though not without a learning curve. Look for more to come soon on our office roles. Thanks again for all your prayers and support!

PRAY FOR:

• Our “Lake Hart Stint” group to continue to embrace all God has for us this year (roles, relationships, transition), especially the kids, and families returning from abroad.
• Our teams (the Design “LAB” and Web Publishing) to be productive and finding a rhythm, even with new members in the mix.
• Field staff and student leaders back on campus, as they sprint toward Fall Retreat!

Thanks for your prayers!
Jayson & Carrie

Creation Festival Recap

Our booth at the Creation Festival was a success (you can see pictures on our website)! The hope was to connect students who want to reach their classmates for Christ – both in college and high school – to staff who can coach and support them. Besides an unspeakable quantity of dust, we brought home names of around 75 students, parents, pastors and volunteers, the majority of whom were interested in reaching high schoolers. Not realizing what a youth-group hub the festival is, we had expected more college interest. Still, we’re thrilled, as Student Venture (CCC’s high school ministry) recently came under the umbrella of the collegiate ministry –and will feed solid leaders into college campuses all over the region!

Home is Where Your Good Pillow Is

Well, here we are back “home” in the cozy apartment that will only be ours for another three weeks when we start preparing for the mid-August move to the Sunshine State! It’s been a summer of regrouping, reconnecting, reflecting, and rejoicing in the midst of much road time (some planned, some incidental). This past week included a wedding (Carrie’s baby sister) and a funeral (Carrie’s grandfather) and saw me drive to PA and back twice to see family and get them to airports.  Even in the craziness, I was able to keep a date with my brother (who lives in Nashville) as we both passed through DC. Praise God for so many sweet moments and meals shared with friends and family, with or without AC!

Three Weeks & Counting

Our hope for June 2011 is that we will be moving back to DC to continue minister here. Accordingly, our regional leadership has allowed us to invest the remainder of this summer shoring up our financial support in hopes of a speedy reentry when we return.  Pray with us that the Lord would raise up a new group of committed partners in the DC area and finish well here, even in the short weeks we have left.

Please Pray

Everything was progressing great with the house until this morning when I got an email that sounded a little fishy to be coming from a realtor. So, I looked up the realtor’s office number and called her.

It was indeed too good to be true.

Please continue praying for our possible move, and that we don’t get scammed in the process.

We may have found a just-about-perfect house inside DC. We don’t want to get our hopes up, but it looks like a great arrangement so far.

Please, keep praying about this possible move – even if this one doesn’t work out we want to follow where God’s leading. Pray that He’d bring a house before us and that we’d see it when He does – and that it would work.

“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.

Well, Saturday is the big day! We finally get to settle in to our new place, park the car and unpack all the summer suitcases. That means we can get mail at our apartment! Our new address is:

Jayson & Carrie Whelpley
4389 Lee Hwy, Apt 13
Arlington, VA 22207

For those of you who may be wondering how this might change your giving, it doesn’t. Gifts can still be sent to us through Campus Crusade in Orlando as usual, as our staff account number will remain the same. As for phone numbers, our cells will stay the same, so feel free to give us a ring, especially if you have any insider suggestions about fun, cheap stuff to check out in DC!

- c

PS – Special thanks is in order for those of you who have prayed us safely through all the summer traveling. It is solely by the grace of God that we did not drive our 12′ 5″ Penske truck into a lovely 12′ 1″ stone arch bridge on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, or get our rental car stuck in 6″ of mud in Kansas. Phew!

For the abridged version that we sent out as a prayer letter, go to the 2007 Newsletters section of our site.

The amount that can go on in a few weeks is amazing!

Just a month ago we had completed moving out of our house in Grove City. With everything packed into a 10’x20’ box or in the back of our car we left 417 East Washington Blvd as our home for the last time. Even now, as I type this, it’s still weird to me and a little sad as well. Even though I complained about the “nothing to do” when I moved there after we got married, I have developed things about it that I love and will miss… almost all of them revolve around the people who have become a part of our daily lives there.

The first destination that we were headed for when we left on May 20th was Ocean City, MD for Summer Project. As I look back on the past 6 weeks I consider my expectations officially blown away. Like everyone, I have the tendency to idolize the past and had my doubts that this summer could come anywhere close to how good last summer was… I was wrong.

After spending a week getting the student housing ready for the arrival of 26 students who thought they were ready for everything that God had to dish out, the 29th came and so did they. There was everything from excitement and laughing to one guy who retreated immediately to his bedroom to journal and sleep, all the time with a distinct deer-in-the-headlights look.

I can speak about “my” guys – the men that I had the absolute privilege to disciple this summer: Adam, Brad, Brett, Justin and Tim. My group had it all: two deep/quiet guys who were athletically gifted; the loud, opinionated Democrat who challenges specifics of whatever is said, but is fully seeking Truth; the diesel technology major who possesses less social graces than most; and the guy who came to Christ just 10 months ago who is seeking after the Lord hard. They were coming from Slippery Rock, Penn College of Technology, Indiana University of PA and George Mason University and I am excited to be sending them back to their schools to lead in the movements that they’re a part of.

Just a few months ago I was worried that we weren’t going to have enough guys to really fill up the project, but God did his part and filled it out… and it was full of boys who were ready to make the commitment to become men after God’s heart. We spent time each week talking about what it means to move out of boyhood into authentic manhood. By the end of our time in Ocean City they all made a public commitment to reject passivity in their lives, to accept responsibility for their decisions (both good and bad), to lead courageously to point others toward Christ even when they don’t want to and when it’s uncomfortable to do so and to expect the greater reward of obedience to God even when it’s easier to settle for less.

Carrie and I got to experience living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a number of very specific ways. Both of us got to usher someone from death into life… within a week of each other. Each Saturday all of the students and staff would spend some time on the beach or boardwalk initiating conversations with the visitors and tourists at the beach. There were a team of students who would set a vision for what we would try to do to start these conversations each week; this week in particular we were simply asking people if there were things in their life that they wanted prayer for – and praying for them there and then if they wanted. Twice that day I approached people who were a little intimidating, a biker couple complete with the leader riding gear and green fading tattoos and a guy sitting on the back of a bench with a black hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with a giant red skull with nails driven through it. The biker couple joked a bit with us, but turned us down, but after asking the guy who was dressed in clothing that wouldn’t be out of character for some of my closer friends, he responded with a sober and serious, “ Yeah, I could definitely use some prayer…”
The night before, Mark, one of the students on our project, was up on the porch of the student housing talking on the phone when he heard sirens of the ambulance turn down the one of the side roads just down from the house, he walked toward the scene and saw a few more ambulances and police there. There was a car flipped over in the road and they were pulling two people from inside of it. When Mark told us about it that morning we all commented that it was odd since the side road was short and none of us could figure out how it had flipped and how it had not hit any of the cars parked on the side of the road or any of the other cars driving at the time.

“…last night my friend took my car keys without asking and was driving my car around and flipped it over. He’s okay, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do.” The wide-open door to talk to Josh was immediate and obvious. As he, Adam (one of my guys) and I talked for the next hour, we learned that he had grown up going to church and still went every once in a while because he somehow knew he should. The conversation opened up for me to share the truth of the Gospel with him – that God had created us all to have a relationship with us, but it is our sin that prevents us from knowing God personally or experiencing His love and no matter how hard we try we cannot overcome our sin in our own strength, but God did something about it in Christ dying and resurrecting three days later, but it’s not enough that any of us just know it in our head but that we receive it individually as an act of faith. Josh, for the first time, grasped the importance of Christ’s work and prayed and asked Him to save him and take the steering wheel of his life. We did explain that it was not going to make everything instantly better, but that he would begin to see God working and changing his life on the whole as he continued to yield more of it to Christ’s control.

Later that Tuesday, Carrie was also able to be a “worker for the harvest” and saw a high school student, Sam, from Pasadena, CA understand and claim the work of Christ for herself as well. As Carrie explained and offered the opportunity to respond to Christ’s offer of salvation and purpose, she responded, “I already prayed for that, just now.” God does not ask us to bring conviction, just to speak truth and sow the seed for the Holy Spirit to use to convince people of their need for His work in their life.

Wednesday, and yet another opportunity to live out the sacrificial love of Christ… after an international dinner and feeding more than 250 international students who are in Ocean City working for the summer and after our weekly large group worship meeting we were leaving to go back and rest from the day. As we walked to our car we saw two of our students come out from behind a dumpster by the large ice cream shop next door to our meeting place. Finding that more than a little odd, we asked what was going on.

It turned out that they, and another of our students, Breyana, were sitting with a very-drunk girl who was there on “Senior Week” (basically a week of non-stop alcohol and partying that recent high school grads participate in each year). It turned out that the girl, Megan, was too drunk to walk, couldn’t find her friends and wanted to get back to the condo she was staying in, but the only thing that she was sure about was that it was at least 75 blocks away… and she didn’t know what it was called. Carrie and I decided to give her a ride to the condo, because there was no way she was going to get there by herself and in the condition (and state of dress, or lack thereof) she was a prime target for a rapist.

During the drive to her condo she told us she was “sure it was on” 73rd, then 80th, then 79th; she vomited in the back of our car (fortunately, we had been wise enough to give her a garbage bag); called her friends numerous times to no avail; and fell asleep again and again and again. When we finally found her condo building (79th street was the winner), her friends were not there and she had no key. Still her friends were not picking up… after about 45 minutes of waiting with her, Carrie and I decided that we would let her stay on an extra bed in our apartment and let her get a hold of her friends in the morning. Driving back the 75 blocks to our apartment, she was just beginning to sober up.

After giving her a shirt (my “Cru” logo shirt) to cover up what her dress was failing to cover we got her settled in to the bed (with a bucket & some water) and headed to bed ourselves; it was now closing in on 1 AM. It wasn’t long before we heard our new friend yelling in the other room (it was pretty apparent that her friends had finally called back), as I began to worry that she would wake up the other staff saying in the same building I heard the yelling stop and a small tapping on our bedroom door. Her friends were now back at the condo and were mad at her for not coming into the under 21 dance club they had gone to (the club that falsely claims a “strict no alcohol policy”) and wanted her to come back right now and told her that if she wasn’t back in 5 minutes they weren’t going to let her back in.

We got back in the car and drove the 75 blocks yet again. She shared that one of her friends had just learned that she was pregnant the week before, but that it was “okay, because she going to get an abortion,” also as her friend talked to her on the phone a fistfight broke out between two more of her friends over the issue of them drinking when the girl was pregnant. Megan informed us that she was glad that she was going to college at Virginia Tech next fall because she believed that it was going to make everything about her life better.

As we dropped her off with the one friend that seemed sober and to truly be worried about her, Carrie exchanged phone numbers with her. She received a text message from Megan thanking us for the care and help that night. Please pray for Megan and the thousands of recent high school grads that have and will come through Ocean City and towns like it who are so caught up in alcohol, sex, drugs and partying that are trusting that a new location and new friends will make their life better. These are the incoming freshmen at our schools! Also, pray that Megan will arrive at Virginia Tech and see something with that logo of Campus Crusade for Christ on it and check out the group, pray that she will caught by the love and call of Jesus Christ just like Brett, Adam, Brad, Justin, Tim, Mark, Josh and Sam.
Thank you for your prayers! These are just the tip of the iceberg of what goes on during the Summer Projects all around the country – God is working, thank you for being a part of it!

[This post was originally written on February 23rd, but we were asked to not announce the DC thing until it was official so we saved it until now.]

The past two weeks have been doosies! I’m going to go in reverse chronological order though.

This past Thursday my uncle Ken passed away from a heart-attack. He was my mom’s brother and my dad’s best friend (my parents are divorced), so it hit the whole family pretty hard. We spent the weekend at the funeral home through 3 packed viewings. I would estimate that nearly 500 people came through to pay their respects. Please be praying for my aunt and cousins as well as my grandfather who has lost his wife and then his youngest child in the course of 7 months.

Ken had seen victory in a fight against non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma that struck nearly a decade ago. He’s battled through the pain of chemo therapy, bone marrow transplant, and the side effects of the anti-rejection drugs. He died of a heart attack in his bed after a night of doing what he loved to do best – snowmobiling.

Two weeks ago, I took a couple of Edinboro students down to the Life Options Conference just outside of Washington D.C. They were there to work through the “What’s next?” questions of being a Junior or Senior in college. They heard speakers from different ministries as well as from the business world encouraging them to think through their future and see it as a ministry from God no matter if they go into vocational ministry like Carrie and I or into the marketplace. Some of the 200 or so students came away confirmed in their calling to pursue a job in their line of study, while some have begun to feel called into full-time vocational ministry – even if just for a year or two.

While there I roomed with a good friend of mine, Jake Tarr (Carrie was visiting her family that weekend). He was recently asked to lead a team of staff and interns to reach the campuses in the D.C. area that have been consistently hard to reach. Take a look at this video:

While I was at the conference Dave Moles, the Regional Catalytic Director, asked if he could sit down with me to talk. I had been wanting to talk to him to clear up some things with us pursuing purchasing a house in the Edinboro/Erie area in the next few months; Dave had something else in mind.

He asked Carrie and I to consider joining the D.C. STINT (Short Term Internship) team for the next year. He told me about everything that we would be doing and how this is something that is a priority of not just our region, but also Campus Crusade on the National level – important enough that CCC National is planning on paying for the team’s housing for a year.

After praying these past two weeks about it, talking to our teammates and others – we have decided to join the D.C. STINT team next year!

Please pray for us as the details get worked out and we prepare our first major move. This will be our first time living in a major city and the students we will be working with will be a very different breed.

It really feels like it’s been a long time since we’ve updated… I guess it has been since Christmas.

Christmas conference was great this year (as usual). If you want to get an idea of how great it was, check out the website for it (link), we’ve uploaded most of the seminars from the it on the “media” page, check a few of them out. Also, if you want to see pictures from it go to gallery.ChristmasConference.com.

This year I was running the light-board for the main sessions (there’s a picture in the “stage” photos section), which is kind of cool since my brother is a professional sound-guy. Carrie was working in the conference office guarding the computers and the information hub for everything.

The semester has started out… crazy. This week we are working about 6 days straight, and the same for next week. We love to see our students excel, but that tends to mean more work for us when they do. Pray for energy from the Lord that we can continue at this pace.

We’ve put out our newest prayer letter about what has been going on.

Also, keep us in your prayers as we look to move north to focus on the Erie-area schools. We are meeting with a bank tomorrow to see what sort of assistance we qualify for.