I just got an email from American University’s chaplains’ board, and I’ve been hearing rumblings from our student-friends at AU about something going on this week on campus. On Friday, January 14 the hate-filled Westboro “Baptist” “Church” will be protesting at AU (the quotes are intentional, they are in no way really Christians and I don’t want to insult any of you who are Baptist).

I can’t figure out the specific reason why they’ve chosen AU, but my concern is not that, but the students there. Wherever Fred Phelps and his “church” (which is made up almost entirely of his offspring and their spouses), it only stirs up hatred – first theirs toward everyone else, then the hatred of everyone around them toward them and as a fallout can intensify their audience’s distrust of faith, religion and God. Please join with us this Friday to pray that students would walk away from the protest, counter protest and whatever else and would seek Truth. Pray that through this students would seek to know a God who cares about them, but cares also about dealing with their sin. Also, pray that WBC would be ignored on the whole and that even they would come to know our God of justice, grace, mercy and love.

“How’d it go?”

After a busy first 8 weeks, Fall Retreat, and 25 visiting staff ”blitzing” four DC campuses for 3 days, there’s never been a more reasonable question to ask.  And I’ve never felt less sure how to answer.  Can I let you eavesdrop a little while I think on it?

Carrie, do you love me?

Yes, Lord… Why do you ask?

More than your success?  More than a “well done”?  More than the Mission itself?  (It is not the end, I AM.)

Carrie, do you love me?

Uh…

Will you feed my lambs?  Even when you are wearied by their indecision?  Grieved by their idolatry?  Sickened by their sexual deviance? Annoyed by their immaturity?  Embarrassed by the family resemblance?  Feed my sheep. MY sheep. (They are not your trophy or widget.)

Carrie, do you love me?

Lord, you know…  But what about these other ministries? They have so many freshmen — students are leading, stuff is happening! They must get something we don’t…”

If it is my will that they remain fruitful, what is that to you? You follow me! In a city of competence and résumés, will you resolve to know nothing but Christ crucified? Will you pour out your precious time with the runaways, internationals, and non-traditionals who will interrupt, drop out, move away and never give back to the “success” of “your movement”?

So, how did it go?

All of us at Fall Retreat

Well, we went (with less students than last year) to Fall Retreat, where one of our sophomore leaders realized for the first time that “God wants all of me,” and has been repenting of hidden sin and trusting God to give up substance abuse.

Our small group Bible study at Georgetown (which has been averaging about 3 actual GU students) has collected an 18-year-old gay runaway we met during “Blitz Week” who wants nothing more than to love Jesus wholeheartedly and start learning the Bible.

And in the past week, God gave opportunities for me to discuss the good news of grace clearly with three people: a bright young man studying audio technology at the University of MD (not our school), a Georgetown non-traditional student who lives across the city and whose only class is during our only group time, and an exchange student (also a Blitz Week contact) who will move back to China in just over a month.  None of these dear folks are likely to be involved with the movement.

The Lord brings hurting people out of the woodwork to consider message of Jesus. These people need more one-on-one dialogue time than ever (years, it seems), and yet this city is such a transient place! Movements do not happen without qualified leaders, and qualified leaders do not happen apart from laboring in prayer and waiting on the Holy Spirit. So please continue to pray with us for patience, wisdom, and perseverance, as we follow a God who does not disappoint! Thanks again for being in this with us!

Pray for:

• Praise God for good health so far this year!
• Pray for the students mentioned above, and several other potential leaders.
• Pray for our slowly-forming volunteer army – their spiritual health & our practical wisdom in how to best fit them in.
• Pray for our staff team’s upcoming visit to the VA Beach area to give lift to friends and help with a cross-cultural movement launch.

“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.

Hey friends, family & partners in the Gospel.

I wanted to clear up what’s going down next week as we head out for Spring Break.

We’re headed to North Africa to a country that we can’t share the name of for security reasons. To assure you, we are going to be safe and we’re actually not going to be doing anything illegal in that country. The country that we’ll be spending time in does have religious freedom legally, but the way that the culture operates can be very different. Of the countries in that region of the world it is definitely one of the most safe for Americans, the security issues that limit us are for the brothers and sisters who are naitives of the country who could be in danger if we weren’t closed about it.

We’ll fly out of the Washington-Dulles Airport on Friday at around 8:00 PM and will return almost exactly a week later (it’s less than a half-hour off). I am dissappointed that we’ll miss seeing what Friday is like in a Muslim country, but it will be an awesome experience for us and the 5 other people that we’ll be travelling with.

Please be praying for us that God would speak in and through this trip to us about where He is calling us to serve Him. We don’t expect that God is calling us overseas, but we’re willing to follow if He does. Also, pray that we’ll encourage our friends on the staff team that is over there long-term and that we’d represent Christ well in whatever way we’re able.

Also, you can be praying for our families as there is still some anxiety about us being there; especially for my (Jayson’s) parents as my brother, Ryan, will be in Iraq at the same time to run sound for a USO show for soldiers in the field there.

Thanks, we’ll share whatever pictures and stories that we can when we get back!

After talking to some friends the other day, I realized that I hadn’t posted our January Prayer Letter here at all! Yeah, I know, it’s March. Here it is. I’ll have the February one up a.s.a.p. as well!

Transformers

Ready or not, the new year is upon us, and the DC Cru team is squarely into Semester #4! As usual, with the change come signs of growth and just as many new questions, now with more eyes looking to us to have a plan.

If there is one thing that God is convincing me of these days, it’s that as the Author of all good stories, He is quite fond of suspense, and will reveal what I need to know no more than a chapter at a time. And if every chapter has a heading, this semester’s seems be “Transformational Community.” This concept  will sound  glorious concept  on paper  - the  power  of the  Risen Christ reworking distant, suspicious, selfish individuals in a city of isolation and racial tension into a gracious, truthful, humble community celebrating the God Who Came Near. It’s beautiful.

In real life, everything we do here starts in the hearts of our greatest asset, a staff team of nine people in absurdly close proximity, all of whom are different, most of whom are roommates, half of whom are spouses… let’s just say it is a workout!  But as we work it out together  with a faithful God, bleeding Romans chapter  12, we are seeing women who say “I don’t bond with females” plan women’s lunches with students from across the city. We’re seeing our (white) staff guys so welcomed in unusual places that they’re being mistaken for members  of historically black fraternities. We’re seeing students  at schools were everyone is too busy and important to give the time of day give up their afternoons  to meet  with friends across the city to talk with strangers about God. We’re seeing non-believers volunteering to plan prayer meetings and giving Christian books to friends. We’re seeing momentum build as people who say “I’m normally not that into God” keep surfacing to see if this community is for real.

Over and out

One of the key marks of a community genuinely transforming in the power of the Spirit is a contagious outward focus, and we (with the help of four visiting Australian summer project students) have been pitching the thought of living on mission wherever the Lord takes us. I wish  I could say I am not surprised to see what I pray for.

Of the 20 students who came out to our last citywide event, at least 6 are seriously considering doing a summer project with Campus Crusade, and 3 have already been accepted to go internationally! Summer project is the best thing Campus Crusade for Christ has to offer, but it is not for the faint of heart. Considering that summer project involves fundraising and spiritual conversations with relative strangers, this is a big deal! As it now stands, DC Cru students will be serving and sharing the story of Jesus on four continents this summer!

Guess it’s that time!

The irony in this story is that the Whelpleys have yet to travel abroad. With the exception of day/weekend trips to Canada, neither of us (or our team leader) have ever been out of these fine United States. The opportunity has come up for several members of our staff team (and extended community) to take a week-long vision trip to North Africa over spring break! More details to come as the time gets closer. Thanks again for your prayers and generosity!

Pray For:

• Vision for structure – pray that in the midst of a ministry that’s changing every semester, we would follow God’s lead, see the big picture, remain flexible and give the structure needed.
• Renewed hunger for God, desire to understand His word, and confidence in His promises in our Cru community.
• The upcoming “neXt” conference for juniors and seniors about how to walk with God and make good decisions after college. February 13-15. Over 200 students registered, 4 from the DC ranks.

P.S. Make sure you’re visiting our website pretty regularly, you can read (slightly) more frequently and see pictures that don’t end up fitting into our monthly prayer letters. You can even sign up to get those updates by email! It’s at Whelpley.org! (Good job, you already know all of this!)

Classes in have barely started in DC, but our team has hit the ground running this week with lots of time in planning and prep for the semester! This weekend, we have visitors — four Aussie students who are in the states for a summer project!  Pray for their health, rest and favor this week as they visit some of our campuses to meet students and share their faith, and for a citywide dinner/prayer time we’ll be hosting for them and our students on Sunday night.

Also, check out this interesting video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3hM. Even atheists think we should be sharing our faith!

RADIATE08 has come and gone. Here are a few images from the week.

Click on the individual images to read an explanation of the picture.

If you are reading this via email and the images are not displaying properly, click here to come to our actual webpage… it will look better there.

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).

I’m sure you’ve all read or heard about the shootings at Northern Illinois University last week, I wanted to pass on some information and some things you can be praying for in relation to this tragedy that seems to be happening more and more frequently. Here are some things that the Campus Director for Cru passed on for us to pray about:

Update from the NIU Team-

Thank you for your prayers and support. We feel loved and embraced by you and praise God for the body of Christ.

Six people have died, including the gunman (who actually went to high school with one of our staff). The building this happened in was our former room for our weekly cru meeting.

No one in Cru was injured in the shooting. Our staff are doing well and are safe. They are doing an awesome job of connecting with students as well as w/ the university.

One girl in Cru who was supposed to be in that class was taking a nap Thursday afternoon and overslept for class.

A student that used to be involved with us a year and half ago was shot in the head, we are awaiting the news of his condition.

A friend of a student in Cru was sitting directly behind a girl who was shot in the head and died.

One of our staff (along with a couple of her disciples) was just 100 yards away from the building when students were fleeing from the gunman. They were not in any immediate danger though.

Through all of this God is opening up incredible doorways for conversing and reflecting the gospel both for our staff and our students.

Our students have been amazing! They have organized prayer vigils and are seeking to engage in conversations with their peers about the shooting and the hope that is found in God.

It is really something seeing our Cru worship leader on National TV leading times of prayer on the campus (what a testimony of God’s work!)

You may be asking yourself, “How can I help?”

1. Pray

2. Would your teams or movements consider writing cards or notes of encouragement that we can pass along to university administration, hall directors, CA’s, police officials. It could be simple statements of we are praying for you and support you during this challenging time and simply sign it “your friends from Campus Crusade for Christ”. We really want to find ways to overwhelm the university with compassionate acts.

If you have other ideas, please, please share them with us.

Please pray for…

The university has asked us to be on call to counsel students (though right now most students have gone home).

We are enlisting the help of churches to create care packages and notes of encouragement for university staff, police, and admin.

We had a Hello Industry concert planned for Feb 21. We are seeking God on wisdom on how to proceed with that. Classes may not even have resumed by then.

We are talking with National people about how to really find ways to reflect Christ to the entire campus and they… have been a tremendous blessing in helping us personally as well as helping us think how God might want to use this.

Salvation for NIU

Pray against the Westboro group that is on campus creating a mockery of Christianity. They have pledged to protest and picket the funerals of the victims. Stephanie actually spoke with the Westboro people on the phone today. WOW, they are so lost and so misguided. Please pray for them and that God would silence the wickedness and foolishness of their message.

Our staff team and their families

Please join us in praying for the campus community at NIU as well as for strength for the Crusade team there.

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!