Kristen, from Bismarck, No.Dak.

Hey everyone. I'm a nursing student here in Bismarck. Senior year, baby :) I love people! I'm excited that I get to use that love in both my profession and in telling people about Jesus! I'm a farm girl who loves chocolate, shopping, and a good book. My testimony is simple. I grew up in a Christian home. I accepted Christ when I was five. I decided I wanted to live for Him when I was thirteen when I saw the love for God that my counselors had when I went to camp that summer. God has protected me from so much and grown me in Him throughout my life. He placed me in Bismarck, where I have met some of my best friends and have grown in the Lord in amazing ways. I've been overseas twice now and have developed quite a heart for missions. We'll see where that goes in the years to come. I am amazed daily by the God we serve. He continues to challenge me, and grow me in my faith.

I'm excited to see what God is doing here on our little campus. We've seen our Crusade grow to a size and intensity I haven't seen in my four years here. It's amazing to watch how He's used a new leader to build this group! I am always wondering what we can be doing to be helping these students grow in their faith, how we can deepen their relationship with the Lord. God is faithful, and is so at work in their hearts in a way that we could never hope to be!

Some verses I love:
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Lindsay T

Hi! My name is Lindsay and I go to the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse! I became a Christian my senior year of high school. I was depressed and had a bad family life, so Christ found me when I was at the end of my rope. My Freshman year of college was huge for me, I started learning what it really means to follow Christ. Since then I have been involved in leadership, and I just try to continue to grow and serve Christ.

I am a huge girly girl, and my favorite color is the color pink. I am a resident assistant, so I very much consider myself to be a people person. I love reading, scrapbooking, writing, and hanging out with friends. I am also a huge fan of puppies and baby animals! And baby anythings! My major is communication studies with a emphasis in interpersonal relations. My minor is Psychology. I love my major and minor because I feel like I am learnging things that can be applied to everyday life. I love analying people, and I think that I am really good at reading how people are feeling and their personality types. I love helping people and encourging people, and I also love being encouraged. My life verse is Romans 8:38-39. I try to always cling to those verses.

I would love to see God raise up people who are willing to be sent on my campus. I have benefitted so much from summer projects and missions trips, and I feel that God would love to send more people on my campus to bring back a heart for the world that sometimes seems to be lacking. I can't wait to see where God takes me this year and what he has for the future!!! :)

Mary

I have never actually blogged before in my life, so this should be a very exciting adventure. My name is Mary Cordle and I am a sophmore at Western Oregon University. I grew up as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea having a fairly good idea of what Christianity was about. I knew how a Christian was suppost act, and what the Christian was supposed to believe, however I didn't really have a clue as to what it meant to have a relationship with Christ. After my senior year of high school I went on a mission trip to Mexico and while I was there I finally had enough courage to ask one of the missionaries what it looked like to walk with Christ and not just know about Him but to know Him. He explained it to me, and since that time, that has been my desire to know my savior more and more everyday.

I am an outdoors kind of girl. Anything outdoors gives me goosebumps. God's creation amazes me everytime I step outside and I am reminded constantly of His great love for me. One of my life time goals is to learn how to fly a plane and get my flying license. I like making faces at cameras and I could listen to the sound of rain on a tin roof for hours on end. Yet one of my greatest dreams is to work with kids. My major is elementary education, as to whether or not I really want to teach elementary kids I don't know, all I know is I love kids. I had the opportunity once to work with an autistic child, and for some reason God blessed me with the joy of seeing this little boy learn how to do something he had never done before. God had given this boy hope, and God had chosen to use me. I felt blessed and amazed that God would use me and I was reminded that God chooses to us to bring His message of hope to the world. It was just a matter of yeilding to His leading and letting Him mold me into He is creating me to be.

My freshman year at college was a tough one, yet God was showing up everywhere. I remember asking God that summer to use me to spread His word, I had know idea what God had in store. He placed me in a dorm where girls just started coming to me, asking me questions about Christ, the Bible, and who God is. I was overwhelmed and terrified, asking God why He had placed them in my life, I was inadequete. I had forgotten two very important things that have been a huge growth area in my life over that first year in college. One God answers prayers. Second He is our strength -- for His power is made perfect in weakeness. Although these girls never accepted Christ last year, I learned to trust that God has them in His hands, and that I need not be terrified for He is God. These girls still are searching, and it is my prayer that they come to know Christ and the wonder of His love. God has also opened up a door for spreading the gospel to International students. This is very new for our campus and needs a lot of prayer. Gods fingerprints are everywhere, what can I say other than He is good. Glory to God!

Psalm 42 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirst for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?...Why are you downcast, Oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God...By day the Lord directs His love, at night His song is with me -- a prayer to the God of my life.


-Posted by Matt for Mary

Hey, I'm Dave Hafner from UW-La Crosse!

I'm 22 and a super senior at UW-L. I've been involved with CRU for 3 years now, this is my 4th. I'm an accounting Major, work as a Phlebotomist at Bio Life Plasma Services, and lead a Bible study on our campus in a alcohol/drug-free hall on campus with my friend Mark.

Testimony:
In Jr. High, through a chili-supper invitation, my parents started going to church and dragging me along. At the time I knew nothing about God, except that I felt he existed. As the years went by, I continued, begrudgingly, to go to Church with my parents. My Sophomore year in HS, my mom had a serious heart problem and was rushed to emergency surgery which lasted 5 hours. As I found this out I was very uncomfortable about it, obviously. However - I was not a super emotional person at the time, and I believed what ever happens does so for a reason. Long story short, it was by miracle of God that my mother lived; she should have been dead for several years by now because she had a tear in her Aorta. A while after my mom had been recovering, she became a Christian through a Bible Study she was attending lead by one over her friends. She understood that her life was not her own because if it was, she should have been dead. About a year later, my Dad gave his life to Christ as well. I was still just going to church. I would have called myself a Christian, but I still did not understand what it meant. When I grad HS, I went on to college at UW-L living with friends from High school. This was a treat, let me tell you that sometimes your best friends are not the best people to live with. Long story short, I lost my closest friends over my freshman year and made the decision to move into the dorms my sophomore year, so I did.
Beginning my freshman year, I was out to make as many friends as I possibly could. Now I was a pretty morale kid, so I didn't like the drinking scene all that much. Accordingly, most the friends I made ended up being Christians, little did I know. Mid-way through my first semester that year I met a guy named Adam who played guitar on a floor below me. Something about the music he played attracted my to listen as he played songs for God! As I began to hang out with him, he recognized that I felt somewhat alone. As he continued to give up his time to hang out with me, he invited me to CRU... I attended, knowing that I hadn't really done anything religious-wise in a while. I enjoyed it a lot and continued to go for more weeks. The 3rd week, our campus director, Mark, shared the Gospel message and I finally understood it in my heart. That night I went back to my room and received Christ as Saviour and Lord! However, I kept it a secret for a few days. The first time I shared it was at a small group Bible study lead by Adam that week. All the guys were super excited. Ever since then I have become greatly involved and have been giving God all I can. The summer of 06 I went to summer project in Ocean City, NJ and had the time of my life. God showed my hundreds of things then and I'm still learning from that summer now! Not to mention all of the eternal friendships that were created there! God has used me to see people come to him over the past to years in great ways, and in that I am blessed! It is also my joy to worship God in song, and lead others to do the same as well. I am so thankful that God pursued me despite my lack of interest in Him. Now, as I live, I seek to live for him in light of eternity and the promises he has established!

Leading Bible study on campus for me has been a privilege. This is my second year doing it and it has been a huge blessing. Last year was tough for me because the hall that I was stationed in was very hard-hearted to Christ. I would maybe be able to meet with 2 people a week to study the Bible with. While I struggled through that experience, I am thankful God had me where he did. This year, as we are using the new BS material, rapid repro, Mark and myself are getting good response from our guys. Sometimes they mention that they want to go a little deeper.. but now we are starting to look at discipling some of the guys, so that will be deep for them, and us. I am really excited to see God continues to grow in our campus and what he has planned. This year our leaders met at a retreat before school started and have been praying for revival. Additionally we just finished the 40 days of fasting a prayer that was going on nationally. I am so excited because I feel like we are slowly seeing this campus come on fire for Christ - especially in the freshman class! Please keep praying expectantly that God will work in your life and on your campus!!!

1 Thes 5:16-18 Be Joyful always, pray unceasingly, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus!

God Bless,
- Dave

My name is Tyler Peterson, I spent so much time trying to prove god did not exist that I proved to my self he did.

I am 19 years old, and I go to UW Lacrosse, WI. My major is Business Management and I am involved in intermural basketball, and Campus Crusade for Christ.



My Testimony

When I was young I was an avid believer in Christ, and my beliefs were based on what my parents had told me. I never questioned god until my freshmen year when one of my close friends introduced me to the idea of atheism. We hung out a lot, and we spoke more and more about religion, and eventually I came to his conclusion there must be no god from not only a logical, but also a moral stand point. After this transformation of belief I became obsessed with proving it to my self and others. My core friends soon consisted of the morally apathetic or atheist kids. While I couldn’t see my self transforming I was along with my belief system. I was extremely cynical most of my high school carrier, and this same attitude resonated into the beginning of my freshman year.

I soon became friends with Casey Tolzman and we decided we wanted to make an ultimate Frisbee team, but we didn’t have enough girls so we decided to go door to door and get some girls to join our team. Well we had just gone to Alex’s room, and they said they couldn’t join because they had cru on Thursday nights, the same time our games were scheduled. I confronted them and said you believe in god?? And basically bashed their beliefs. A few days later Tony Fredrickson stopped by my room, and I took it upon my self to challenge his beliefs as well. We debated for at least an hour and he left with us at a philosophical stale mate. Then about a month later he came back, and got me to concede that there was a possibility of a god, and then challenged me to search for the truth my self. This proved to be a challenging part of my journey. For at least three months I read books such as “case for faith” and wrote down various arguments against and for a god. I worked through them and thought about what made any of my arguments truly valid. This was supplemented by long talks with Tony and other friends around campus, and eventually I saw how Christ really could be the answer to my life I was looking for in drugs, and women and liquor.

I made my decision for Christ because logically and morally it made sense to me. I asked Christ to be in my life because I knew he was the savoir to mankind, and he sacrificed his life for me to experience eternal life, and not recognizing him would be spitting in the face of a man who was the greatest gift to man kind our caring and loving god could give.


Since I've been involved in CRU at lacrosse I've seen many changes in attitudes of freshman, and even a few sophmores that I've been able to interact with. However, there is a huge need on this campus and everyother in this country for people to be excited about god. I feel it is up to us to appeal to our fellow students to allow them to see god as we do. As our savior, our confident, and the purpose for our lives. Hopfully with our combined efforts we can make a large impact not only on our campuses, but a worldly impact through the people we choose to share the word with. I'm excited to see this happen and to see all of your posts.

I'm sorry about my first post but I don't know how to delete it, or edit it.

My name is Tyler P, and I spent so much time trying to prove god wrong, and I ended up proving him right.

Post a picture of yourself and a picture of your campus
* Tell a bit about yourself-Christian testimony, interests, why
you chose your school/major, life verses, anything that you want
* Write a little about how you have seen the kingdom of God
expand this fall. It might be in your personal life as Jesus begins to
reign in more areas of your life. And, it is probably on campus as you
have seen the kingdom of God move to new places (or perhaps new
campuses). This expansion could include the reproduction/multiplication
of groups or "entry points" for students to explore what it means to
enter into a relationship with God or to grow in that relationship.

Here are the links and instructions that you need:
You are invited to contribute to the private blog: Winning, Building,
and Sending Students.

second Ill finish this soon I gota do it at the library

I'm Matt, and I am easily distracted!

Right then, I’m Matt Schmidgall and I am a Sophomore at Western Oregon University. My major is Mathematics. Yes, I’m one of those creepy kids that actually enjoys sitting in his room for hours on end doing math homework. I chose it because while I enjoy doing it, I also feel pretty passionately about the field itself. Math is neat!

Not as neat as God, of course. Well, I didn’t always feel that way. In fact, I used to think God was a mean-spirited jerk that spent most of His time not existing. Then, when He was bothering to exist, He was usually spending the time making my life, and everyone else’s, worse. The people who claimed to follow Mr. Nonexistent Of-The-Bible were pretty trashy, too, I felt.

Then, as things go, I happened to meet a few people throughout my high school years that ate away at those misconceptions. Good, honest, loving Christians. Eventually I stopped being a stubborn, angsty little boy in regards to the idea of God. Well, less so of one, anyway. It took me a while to drop the baggage completely.

My Junior year was when I really started considering God. About halfway through I finally let myself start feeling the hunger I had for Him. Quite a bit of time went by (I am really, really stubborn), but the summer of my Junior year I finally accepted Christ into my life. That’s where the most lovely of love stories began in my life, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

God has really started getting me more involved with Christian activities. I used to hate youth groups and most Christians (Like I said, I was a stubborn, stubborn boy), but now I’m involved with Campus Crusade at WOU (something I’d love to see my past self learn about. The look on my face would be priceless.). My main experience with seeing God’s kingdom and expansion is primarily seeing that there IS a kingdom on campus. There have been some incredible opportunities for growth and healing in many areas of my life. Beginning to see His depth of presence and scope is wonderful.

Luke 11:9-10

So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.