The Sacramento skyline

We’d love to announce to you an exciting transition!

Jeff was recently asked by our regional leadership team of Cru to consider taking a leadership position overseeing college campuses in the greater Sacramento area.  After spending time praying and receiving feedback from peers and leaders, we’ve decided to accept the position.

We’re excited for what the Lord is calling us to!  The greater Sacramento area has about 150,000 college students.  Over time, we would love to see each one of them have an opportunity to put their trust in Jesus.  Jeff will get to co-lead a team of staff and students seeking to fulfill this mission, and Cameron will get to be a valued and experienced team member.  While there is an established group of students already involved in Cru at Cal State University of Sacramento (CSUS), our vision is greater than just one campus.  We are trusting the Lord to reach every campus in the surrounding area.

While we are excited to trust the Lord for a new scope of students, we are sad to leave our current team and students at UC Davis.  Cameron has spent eight years at Davis (four as a student and four as full-time staff with Cru) and Jeff five years.  We’ve seen the Lord bring students to know him, build them up in their faith, and use them as leaders on campus and after they graduate to reach those around them.  The past five years of changed life stories in prayer letters have testified to this! What has made leaving Davis easier and all that the Lord is doing here, however, is knowing that there is a solid group of strong leaders, especially among the staff team. The Lord will continue to work in and among the staff and students.  We feel that UC Davis is in good hands!

Staff leadership in Sacramento, however, has been shorthanded.  We are excited to help fill a huge need and see many students’ lives changed as a result!

Please pray for our transition.  There is already lots of transition with the addition of Abby.  Now, we will move to a new city, find a new church, and have a new role with Cru.  It’s all exciting, but a transition nonetheless.

We’re grateful for you as you are with us in this transition!  Excited to see what the Lord does in the coming years!

Prayer Requests

Please pray for our Davis students as they prepare for summer! Pray that they would walk closely with Jesus as they go home, work, and travel!

Praise God for the 5+ years of ministry that Jeff and I have experienced in Davis!  God has blessed us with many firsts here- college, meeting, marrying, first home, baby, etc!

Please pray for us as we prepare and transition to Sac. Pray for our move and housing in Sac.  And pray that God would bless our new team and the students we reach there.

Hannah, a 2nd year student, used a campus outreach to start spiritual conversations with 3 of her friends.

“How can you say there is only one way to God?” Questions like this come up frequently on the campus today.

Last month the students on our outreach team hosted a 3 week outreach meant to spark candid spiritual conversations with non-Christians and help equip Christian students in how to engage in spiritual dialogue with the culture around them.  The outreach team gave trainings, helped students engage with others on campus, and encouraged students to invite their friends to the viewing of a 3-part video series of Manhattan pastor, Tim Keller, addressing hard questions from skeptics. The series entitled “The Reason for God” deals with various questions and worldviews that pose barriers to the gospel, such as “Why does God allow suffering?” and “Isn’t the Bible a myth?”

Hannah (above), a third year animal science major, invited her spiritually open roommate, Lara, and two other friends, Melody and Lauren (one a Christian and one not) to week 3 of the video series.  The topic was “How can you say there is only one way to God?”

After watching the 20 minute discussion between Tim Keller and a group of men and women with various spiritual views, Hannah and her friends were able to have a great conversation about this topic.  While this wasn’t her first spiritual conversation with Lara, it re-opened the door for more conversations, which had become less frequent because of the busyness of classes, work, and studies for both girls.

We are excited by our students’ desire to reach their friends and fellow students with the gospel! Thanks for coming alongside us and students like Hannah as we seek to make Christ known on the college campus.

Prayer Requests

Praise God for the work he’s done through this outreach and our students involved with it!

Please pray for boldness and wisdom for Hannah as she continues to pursue Lara in conversation.  Pray that God would draw Lara (and the other non-Christians who engaged with the outreach) to himself.

Brian’s freshman year was greatly important for his faith

Freshmen move in at UC Davis on September 19-20.  We will be intensely reaching out to them in the following weeks.  To give you an idea of how influential freshman year can be and what God can do, we thought it would be best for you to hear the story of a former freshman, Brian (above), in his own words:

“Growing up, I was very lucky to have a wonderful mother who raised me in the church despite the fact that my father was not, and still is not to this day, a Christian. But as I grew older, life changed.  All of a sudden, the story of Jesus [and living as a Christian] didn’t seem so sweet. Too often it seemed like a long list of rules, which wasn’t very appealing. Instead, I choose to prioritize being the top of my class and relationships with others over my faith.

“Entering college after a senior year mostly spent backpedaling in my faith, I was very unsure of the direction my spiritual life was going to take. At the recommendation of a friend of my older brother, I decided to show up at Cru’s first weekly meeting of the year. The highlight of the meeting came at the end when I was introduced to the two upperclassmen, named Tyler and Andrew, who would be leading the Bible study in my dorm area. Although I proceeded to go to a party immediately following the meeting, I was left thinking about the enthusiasm and care that seemed to emulate not only from Tyler and Andrew, but from everyone else back at the weekly meeting.

“Over the next year, Tyler and Andrew taught me how the Christian life is a conscious decision to make every day to submit myself before our eternal king Jesus and trust that the path he has prepared for me is for my good. As I began to surrender things that I had long held onto, I was amazed to see how Jesus began molding me into a new person. I had a purpose like none before, and all of a sudden, asking my floor mates and friends about their spiritual beliefs and sharing with them what I believed, while still scary, was something that actually happened and I even looked forward to!”

Brian led a small group bible study in the dorms last year and was able to mentor two men who lived in the dorms.  He says, “I see in their eyes a desire to experience our Savior in new and deeper ways, and I absolutely love helping them take steps in that direction.”  After coming with us to South Africa this summer, he is ready to reach out to more freshmen and strengthen them in their faith, like Tyler and Andrew did for him.

Thanks for being part of reaching this year’s incoming freshmen!  We’re so grateful for your partnership!

Prayer Requests

Thank God for the work he has done in Brian’s life and how he is using him.

Pray for the incoming freshmen.  Pray that Christians would get connected to a church or campus fellowship so that college can be a time where they thrive in their faith.  Pray for non-Christians, that they would meet Jesus have their lives changed.

Pray for energy and dependence on the Spirit as our staff and students reach out.

Frank (left) with Brian, a first-year student at Rhodes University

God often orchestrates divine appointments when you aren’t looking for them.  Even on mission trips!

A huge goal of our trip to South Africa this summer was to surface Christ-centered leaders at Rhodes University who would be willing help lead a student-led movement of Christ followers that want to reach their campus after our team left.  One day, Ashley was taking a lunch break after a morning of evangelism on campus.  Waiting in line in the cafeteria, she struck up a conversation with Brian (above, right), a first year student from Johannesburg.  It was just chit-chat, but little did Ashley know that her conversation would set the stage for a deeper conversation.

Ashley paired up with Frank (above, left) after lunch for more evangelism.   Recognizing Brian, Ashley approached him.  After eventually presenting the gospel, they found out that Brian was a Christian and looking for a Christian group to be part of.  Frank and Brian started to meet up regularly to go over four basic bible studies that ground Christians in their faith.  Brian was a faithful and eager learner.  Just a few months after getting involved in Cru at Rhodes University, he is now ready and excited to lead a discipleship group in which he can communicate the truths that he learned to his fellow students.  Praise the Lord!

The Lord did so much in our time in South Africa.  Leaders were raised up and are continuing to be raised up through currently involved students.  Additionally, there are now at least eight discipleship groups happening at Rhodes University, seven of which are led by Rhodes students.  Brian and the other involved students are eager to reach their campus.

Thanks for partnering with us in this mission to the world!

Prayer Requests

Thank God for the 13 South Africans who began relationships with Jesus!

Pray for a strong student movement that lasts for decades to come.

Pray for the students as they seek to reach their campus.

Praise God for the work he did through and in our team of Americans!

Many people’s worldviews are becoming increasingly diverse.  And for many, the Christian worldview is becoming increasingly strange and hard to believe.  This is especially true on college campuses like UC Davis.

Even if students wanted to believe the gospel, most just can’t accept it because it goes against what they “know” to be true of the world.  And, what they “know” to be true has to be discussed before they can even come close to a point where they can fully entrust their lives to the biblical Jesus.

Because of this, we’ve been using a conversation starter on campus called “Perspective Cards”.  With the look of a deck of playing cards, this tool allows us to respectfully and casually dialogue with students on issues such as:

What is the nature of God?
What is the meaning and purpose of life?
What is human nature?
Who is/was Jesus?
What is the source of spiritual truth?

Cameron and I love using these cards because it allows us to diagnose where any student is at spiritually.  We get to listen respectfully, ask questions that help them consider what is true, and then present the Christian worldview.  Because a framework has been laid, they are usually able to listen, understand, and consider the message of Jesus in a way that they wouldn’t have been able to had their worldview and the Christian worldview not been discussed.  In addition, a conversation like this begins to establish a jumping-off point for many conversations in the future.  (Coming to faith is often a long process for today’s college students.)

Our students in Cru at UC Davis love using these cards too!  We had an outreach a few weeks ago where we challenged students to prayerfully consider trusting the Lord to try Perspectives with three of their friends over the course of two weeks.  In total, students decided to trust the Lord to have over 150 conversations with their friends who may or may not know Jesus!  It’s so cool to see our students taking steps of faith to trust the Lord to have spiritual conversations!

We are so thankful for innovative tools that foster meaningful conversations with today’s generation of college students.  In the coming months, we’ll give you some stories about how students have used these cards to reach out to those around them.

Grateful for your investment in our ministry,
Jeff and Cameron

P.S. If you want to hear how you might be able to get a deck yourself and how you could use these cards, visit jeffandcam.com/perspectives

Prayer Requests

Thank you for praying for Gabby! And, please continue to do so. God is doing some cool things in her life.

Pray that our students would continue to have a heart to reach out to their friends.

Please pray for our Easter Outreach on March 31 – April 2. Pray for openness and lots of gospel conversations.

Please pray that God would give us and our staff team rest and rejuvenation over spring break and as we head into spring quarter.