We want to thank those of you who are a part of partnering with us in ministry through prayer and financially. One way we thought we would try to connect you with our family was through a Prayer Magnet that we sent out. If you did not happen to receive one or would like another one to post somewhere else, please feel free to download another copy.
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Sally Barrett – Crossroads Student |
It was a sunny Thursday at about noon. I (Rachel) was walking with a Crossroads student named Sally to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The Chicago Summer Project (CSP) provided childcare every Thursday so the moms could go on campus with students and do ministry.
The previous week was the first time I had been on campus in two years. I hadn’t had an opportunity since we had 2 children in less than 2 years and I was feeling rusty. Thankfully the first week I had some really good spiritual conversations with a couple students and it reminded of how much I love students and the Gospel.
Sally is going to be a senior and is experienced in ministry, so I was mainly there for moral support and the extra experience to help her learn more. We stood in the quad, and surveyed the handful of students sitting around reading or eating lunch. Sally picked a girl who was sitting in the shade eating lunch.
As we got back from our Summer Assignment – Leading the Crossroads Project in Chicago we needed to take some time and evaluate our ministry and support needs. We found that we were in need of $2600 in monthly support. This was significantly more than we were expecting. Ryan worked with his team to figure out how to meet this need and the needs of the Great Lakes Regional Ministry.
Ryan has been hard a work at the beginning of the fall semester trying to wrap up a number of projects and prepare to spend the rest of the semester away from his role in the office and focusing on our urgent financial need.
We have mentioned before that our support has been hit hard over the past year. Devoting so much time to the ministry has left little time for us to focus on personal finances for our ministry. This past July marked six years of our ministry with CCC. Though we’ve seen the Lord work and have been able to pioneer many avenues of ministry, in the past year, we’ve also seen our financial support drop off. So much so that we have been getting paid less than our normal income for several months. We could use your help in this situation. If we don’t get more support soon, we’ll continue getting short paychecks.
We’d love your prayers for us and our ministry in this area. We’d appreciate your prayers for provision and to connect with new ministry partners.
We’d love it if you could pray about ways you may be able to help– whether it be through giving a gift yourself to help us get back on track with our support or whether you can connect us with some friends that would be interested in hearing about our ministry with CCC.
We are grateful to God for His provision and to you through whom He has chosen to provide. Thank you for your commitment to what He has called us to do.
In the midst of this financial need we are experiencing, God has been faithful and we have continued to press forward. Ryan has been developing a new social web tool dubbed ‘Avocado’ for the entire Campus Ministry that will help us connect more. It was presented at our regional Spring Leadership retreat with resounding accolades. Our leaders could not wait to get their hands on Avocado and use it on the campus.
Avocado fills a need for our ministry where there has been a void. In ministry as well as business, the desire is to use the right tool for the job. Unfortunately, many of our staff in the field have had to find other solutions to connect as a campus and with other campuses throughout the region and nation. Many times the later is neglected all together.
We will be Launching Avocado this fall. Please pray that Ryan will be able to keep the development process for Avocado moving forward even as he focuses on our support needs.
If you are able to give to our ministry in our current time of need, the easiest way to do so is to go to give.ccci.org If you would like to introduce our ministry to your friends, please email us and let us know.
-thank you
On May 26th, we packed our minivan with our most vital belongings (including a tub full of toys!) and drove our little family to our summer assignment downtown Chicago. It was a little daunting to pull up to a tall brick building surrounded by other tall brick buildings–much different than our suburban living in Fishers, Indiana.
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After moving in, we met with the other staff that would be living alongside us. Thankfully, there were two other families with kids right around Braden’s age. The first couple weeks were a bit of a challenge, as we figured out our new routine, activities and how to navigate the city. Rachel and the other moms discovered a park in the middle of a nearby neighborhood, with a public library and some fun places to eat. Braden loved the train, and since there was a stop right outside our apartment building, he would get to ride almost every day.
Ministry in the city was amazing. This was the first year that Crossroads (our Operations focused project in Indianapolis) partnered with the Chicago Summer Project (CSP). There were 30 staff and 50 students from all over the country. 10 of those students worked with Ryan as he led the Crossroads project. The Crossroads students spent their days working on regional and local level projects, and spent their evenings and weekends with the CSP students, in Bible studies and on campuses around the city.
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The Crossroads students used their skills in design, writing, and video to directly impact the ministry of Campus Crusade in the Great Lakes. They were able to work on projects that Ryan’s team, Zero Canvas, are not able to work on during the school year. Many of these projects will be a jump start to the fall and will give lift to our local level ministries across the region. The main project that they are working on is the theme and branding of IndyCC, our annual conference in December that includes the entire region, with about 2,000 students in attendance.
One of our favorite times of the week was Wednesday nights, when Rachel would cook dinner for the Crossroads students. We would have the ten of them, along with our family of 4 and another staff gal that worked with the project, into our tiny living room to eat together. It was a great chance for Rachel to get to know the students better and for them to bond as a team. Braden, our performer, loved the students. He learned all their names and was always excited to see them and talk to them. Logan was a favorite as well, as the girls could hold him and he would just smile and laugh.
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We have many fun memories from our summer in Chicago. Next month, we will tell you about a student that Rachel met with on the UIC campus and shared the Gospel with.
Thanks so much for making this possible! Because of your support and prayers, these 10 students were able to use their gifts to serve and support many campuses in the Great Lakes Region, Ryan was able to pioneer a new partnership between Crossroads and the CSP, and Rachel was able to share the Gospel with a student who is now growing like a weed in her new faith. We couldn’t do it without you!
Please Pray
> Please pray for the many families that will be staffing this project. It looks like the kids will be outnumbering the staff! This presents some unique dynamics and challenges for the staff team.
> Please pray, as the staff and students finish up the support raising process. This is the first time most of these students are raising support. And as many of you are well aware, living in the city is not cheap.
In between our Summer Project in Chicago and our fall semester this year Ryan has been working on our support needs. Our monthly support has significantly fallen short over the past year and we are trusting the Lord to continue to provide for our family. We have recently adjusted our goals to meet our new needs with two children and health care for our family. Realizing that we are currently in need of $900/month in support, we ask for your prayers as we hope to gain this support shortly so that we will be able to continue ministry through the entire year and not have to pull off assignment to focus on these needs.
