Hello, and once again, happy 2021. This year Andy and I will celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary!
I mentioned in our last two letters that God has been at work during the last ten months, and we wanted to share some of those stories with you. We also want to thank you for walking and working with us.
We met a man and his family in Colorado who now work in Western Asia, in a closed area of the world. People are hungry for hope there. A local believer, “Walter” took the time to tell his life story to two refugees from his home country. The three now meet in secret to learn about Christ and the Bible.
A colleague of ours was having a hard time meeting with students at the college in his town (the school has restrictions on who can be on campus) so he enrolled! He has so much access to students as a student! He meets with three PhD students and one master’s degree student from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal. They eat dinner together then read through a chapter in Matthew’s gospel (it has the most references to the OT and he’s showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of thousands of years of prophecy).
A young man Andy and I have watched grow up has begun to work with Cru’s evangelistic movie, The Jesus Film. He and his team have been doing webinars to equip Christians and missionaries with tools to share their faith. They trained a group of pastors from South Asia to use the Jesus Film App’s short films.
“Using the Jesus Film App, ‘Frank’ asked his longtime friend, ‘Barry’, a police officer, if Barry wanted to watch a short film with him. This led to them watching a second film together, in their native language, a clip taken from the Jesus Film. Barry heard the gospel for the first time. He told Walter, ‘it was as if I have been waiting for this news my whole life, but up until now I had no one to explain it to me.’ Frank went on to share the gospel, through the Jesus Film App, with Barry’s brother and sister, both of whom accepted Christ! While he was sharing this story, Frank could not stop smiling with the overwhelming joy of knowing many people in his family were now going to be with him in Heaven.”
One of Cru’s evangelistic efforts involves the very effective website EveryStudent.com. There are now 48 language versions of EveryStudent.com. A new email series is available in Croatian, Latvian, Macedonian, Serbian, Turkish, Japanese, Russian-stan, Thai, Hindi, Kazakh, Slovak, and Polish. EveryStudent.com sites have reached nearly 60 million people. In 2020, more than 2,400 people each day asked Jesus into their lives . . . more than 900,000 new believers.
A team with a partner ministry (not Cru) was showing the Jesus Film to refugees. This partner first ministers to the refugees’ physical needs and then invites them to watch the movie. Nearly everyone accepts! A family of eight from Iraq attended one of the showings. Among them was their 19-year-old daughter, Tami. During the entire evening she was downcast and completely closed off, not saying a word. The refugees watched the movie intently, listening to the gospel in their mother tongue. At the very end of the film, Tami came alive. Tami cried out, “Jesus has called me! I’m going to follow Jesus!” The team sat to talk with her and her family. It was then that they heard Tami’s story.
When she was 15 years old, while walking with a friend near Baghdad, a car pulled near them. ISIS radicals grabbed and kidnapped the two girls and sold them into slavery. For the next four years Tami suffered greatly, going from captor to captor, sold and resold. The radicals killed her friend. When Tami was close to death, the radicals sold her back to her family for a very high ransom. As soon as they were able, the family fled to Turkey, to Greece, and then traveled on foot to Germany. Tami said that as she watched the film, Jesus met her personally, called her and set her completely free. The moment Jesus said she was His disciple, all the chains of trauma that had gripped Tami fell away! That’s when she shouted out. Tami even freely told her story to a man on the team, something she could not do before. “In reaction to her story our team could only cry. What Jesus has done for Tami no one else in this world could ever do.”
Closer to home, Andy and his teams of IT people have been managing Cru’s corporate Zoom accounts. Last February (before the pandemic hit) Cru worldwide hosted about 500 Zoom meetings. When the pandemic hit there was an immediate shift to do ministry virtually. At first, the team and Andy had to work out how to keep outsiders from “bombing” Cru meetings. (It is hard to concentrate when someone from outside your organization puts a video of “Baby Shark” on repeat inside your gathering). That was remedied quickly. From April through December 2020, Cru worldwide hosted an average of 25,000 meetings each month. Andy and those who work with him have been kept on their toes!!
Our friend Keith works in Cru’s church planting area. Keith recently said to the people on Andy’s team, “In Nigeria, 121 church planters have been trained using Zoom. As a result there were 3423 presentations of the gospel, 1261 decision to follow Jesus, and 73 new churches started. And this is just 1 country of 145 countries where we have a ministry! This has all been possible because of your leadership to provide Zoom to our field staff.”
Andy and I are so blessed to work where we can hear these stories. And we are blessed that you all are partners with us in this ministry work. Thank you for your prayers and giving. God is not stopped by a pandemic. God has not been asleep for months. Glory, He has been at work, changing lives and empowering others to bring the great news of the life of His Son to the hearts of many.
The Kelloggs 