(This is the wonderful video Roy Baker and WVU Cru. suprised us with at our last Cru. worship meeting. We were completely shocked, but so thankful for all the wonderful words spoken. It was the perfect going away present!!)

Well, our time working with Campus Crusade for Christ at West Virginia University is officially over. Last week we had our very last Bible Studies, Cru. worship meeting, and evangelism sharing in the Mountainlair. It is such a bitter sweet feeling having spent 7 years in this town (6 years for Brooke). All that we have known of each other is Morgantown and WVU Cru. Wow!

We are preparing to move to Tidewater at the end of this month and are extremely nervous, but so unbelievably excited. We hope you will join us in prayer, as we transition into a new town, new job description, and new life. We'll miss you Mo-town and all the wonderful "West Virginians" that have been a part of our life. Blessings!

(Us watching the surprise video at Cru!)

New Beginnings

I know that it has been forever since we last posted, but we are alive and well! Don't worry! Now, I wish that I could promise you that we will be posting at least once a week, but I'm just not that person. However, I do want to promise you that we will post more frequently (than once every 5 months). Ha!

I did want to take this moment to share with you about an IMPORTANT CHANGE Brooke and I are making this summer. We are moving from Morgantown, WV to Norfolk, VA!! We are taking a new position within Campus Crusade for Christ to launch new ministries on college campuses that do not have Campus Crusade. We will be directors of a team of new staff working on campuses in the “Tidewater Region.” We are so excited about this new opportunity to trust God, and hope you will join us in this new adventure to reach every college student with the message of Jesus Christ!

The above video was filmed on some of the campuses we will be working on, and details what our new ministry will look like. (The video was specifically made as a tool to recruit new interns and staff to join us.)

As we transition to this new position, I look forward to updating the blog more frequently as a tool to share with you the excitement and frustrations of starting brand new ministries. So look forward to it!!

Brian

PUMPKINS!

We are so *EXCITED* about Fall! The leaves are changing, the weather is getting colder (but not too cold!), it's the middle of FOOTBALL season, and it's PUMPKIN carving time! Here's a little glimpse into the FUN we have together.

THE BEFORE...

THE MIDDLE...

AND THE AFTER...

We love you guys!

Cru. in the News

Last month a story was written by WVU's newspaper (The Daily Athenaeum) that talks about a new outreach that Brooke and some of our students started. It was really cool to see the newspaper approach us about the story and then print it on the FRONT PAGE entitled "Cru. Organization spreads love, offers rides students in need."

You can view the front page of the paper as a pdf here: http://www.da.wvu.edu/print_edition/pdf/2008-09-12Page1.pdf and the article continued here as a pdf: http://www.da.wvu.edu/print_edition/pdf/2008-09-12Page2.pdf

Or you can just read the text at: http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?story_id=38685

Thanks for stopping by,
B&B

Welcome to WVU!

The first week of the semester, affectionately known as BLITZ week to us, has come and gone. We spent the whole week doing all we could to welcome the class of 2012 to WVU. We love to let the freshman known that even though WVU is the #4 party school, there is MUCH more going on. Campus Crusade at WVU provides a place for students to find out more about Jesus and to grow closer to Him while they are here.

BLITZ week events:
August 15-Freshmen MOVE-IN! We were there to greet families as they helped their son or daughter move-in. We invited the students to some of our events during the week, but we were most excited to serve the WVU community by lending a helping hand.
August 16-Root Beer Float Social in the middle of campus during the afternoon and a party in the evening at a house were 6 Crusade guys live . It was the first full-day at WVU for the 6,000 freshmen, and we loved spending some quality time meeting and hanging out with these new students.
August 18- Spiritual interest surveys in all the freshman dorms. Almost 1,000 students checked that they wanted to be involved in a dorm Bible study and wanted to grow in the relationship with God.
August 19- We visited students' dorm rooms who had filled out a survey saying they wanted more information.
August 20- Volleyball social outside one of the biggest freshmen dorms on campus(houses about 2,000 students). It was another great connection time with freshmen students.
August 21- Continued to followup surveys and invite freshmen out to our weekly meeting. At 9pm our worship service(called CRU.) begins with appx. 320 students packing out the auditorium classroom! It was such a great night.! After CRU. I (Brooke) met a freshman named Jessica at our "rockin after-Cru social." She said: " This was the greatest part of my week! I'm so glad CRU is here!" Thanks for praying for us as the semester starts up! We are so thankful for your partnership in bringing the gospel to WVU!!

A summer of trusting God...

Wow! I cannot believe our summer project to East Asia is over! Thanks so much for praying for us and our team. (And thanks to those of you who have stuck with our blog! We had to disable the blog for the summer for security reasons, but we are back up and running. We hope you'll leave a comment, so we know we still have friends on here!?!?). Now that we have been back for a couple weeks, it is still so hard to try and express the summer in words. Every time someone asks, 'How was your summer?"--we either feel a little weird and simply say, "It was good!" or, we ramble on for hours about a bunch of random things without really making much sense or coming to any type of conclusion.
But today I feel like I could summarize the summer like this: It was the most exciting, heart-wrenching, fun, and difficult summer of our lives, that ultimately brought Brooke and I closer to one another and closer to the heart of God. (Wheeeeeeewwww!) It's hard for us to imagine that just a few weeks ago, we were meeting daily with Asian students (half-way around the world) who literally had never heard of the name of Jesus or who had never heard about the Gospel! It was so thrilling and so exhausting to share our faith every day with these students. With our the team, the Gospel was fully shared with almost 100 students, we personally saw 3 students accept Jesus into their life, and we were able to individually meet and discuss the Bible with 4 young Christians who did not know any other Christian students. In the midst of all that, we were taking language classes, living in a dormitory, eating a lot of rice, and loving all the fun times of laughter and joy with our team of 9 WVU students. What an amazing experience to be used by God on the frontlines of what He is doing around the world. Thanks for being a part of it with us!

Breakfast is served (on the street!)

Brooke got to spend time with one of her best friends, April, who was in East Asia serving God for a year.

Some of the awesome Asian food served "family-style."

But when the Asian food became too much for our stomachs, we were so thankful for the few American restaurants in the country. Like McDonalds, KFC and PIZZA HUT!

Our wonderful team of WVU students!

We're sorry, but for security reasons, we can't show pictures on our blog of us doing ministry or of our new Asian friends. What we can share, though, is this wonderful quote (in broken English) from one of the Christian students we met at the University that was impacted by our time there: "I so happy! I firmly believe that God and my dear American sisters will bring me more and more brave and power. I can't express my happy by any word! I love you forever!"

Check back soon for an East Asia update with lots of pictures!:)