Happy belated Easter! We hope you all had a memorable time celebrating our living Savior, Jesus. We thoroughly enjoyed both the spring traditions, and the real reason for Easter, especially since this is Anja’s first Easter since asking Jesus into her heart. We also want to welcome a new family member. My brother, Ken, and his wife, Kathy, had Julius Miles (going by Miles) Buck on April 23rd! He’s almost as cute as Anja was 😉

We’ve had so many things we wanted to share with you over the last few months that we’ve not had the space, so I’m going to try to condense a couple of them for you this time. The first is an excerpt from a letter from some friends of ours, who presently serve North Africa / Middle East from France. They have four kids, and their eldest, Charles, who is twelve, had a great chance to serve uniquely in Senegal, West Africa! He went with a team of 20 people and worked with local Churches and CCC staff. They helped by showing the Jesus film in villages and shared their testimonies during the reel changes. About 98 people indicated decisions to trust Christ. The local teams were so excited because this team enabled them to do about 6 months of work in just 2 weeks

“What was the one event that made an impression on you? The Imam (local Muslim leader) of one village came forward to trust Christ at one of the showings. Afterwards he asked us to pray for him because everything in his life had been devoted to Islam. He knew he was throwing it all away. In another village a local chief became a Christian. They will both have a powerful influence for Jesus in their villages.”

Charles was recruited to go because they needed someone who spoke French to translate for the team. “What did you translate? I translated the team members’ testimonies and a 90 minute sermon that Marcus (the team leader) preached. I also helped with the daily interactions with the Senegalese. (Marcus said Charles was indispensable to the trip because the local Campus Crusade Director doesn’t speak any English…)”

I just loved this story because I remember Charles when he was a baby crawling through the cubicles at work! Now, he’s used his unique talents to serve where he was able and he and the team were used by God to have a great impact in the lives of many Senegalese. They were also a great help and encouragement to the local CCC team and churches. I wanted to share it with you, because you undoubtedly have unique gifts that God may want to use in special ways, and if a 12 year old boy who loves God can do it, so can you and I! If you have an opportunity and feel God may be calling you to go, go for it! If you want ideas, let us know and we can put you in touch with people who organize trips like this.

Secondly, we’ve been excited to hear some fantastic statistics for what God is doing through Campus Crusade for Christ’s websites. Steve Douglass, Campus Crusade for Christ’s President, said yesterday that a person is reading about how to know Christ every 5 seconds on one of our sites, and many of them are from locations like the Middle East! Earlier this month he shared that “Based on last year’s numbers, we are predicting a million people will pray to accept Christ on a Campus Crusade website this year. This may be the first year the Internet eclipses the JESUS film as the most effective evangelism tool in the world.”

Isn’t that amazing? And I love it that Karl’s work is allowing these people to get to many of these sites! Our God is so creative! You can be a part of this, too, because these people need personal contact as well to help them get started in growing as Christians. If you would like to be involved as an e-mail mentor, sign up at www.responsecenters.org (Global Media Outreach is a ministry of Campus Crusade). Thank you also for all you do to keep us serving! God bless you!