Dan Trenda, the director of Cru’s summer mission trips program, shared that 1,569 students have volunteered to participate in summer missions on either stateside or international projects. 1,338 of those are traveling to a location where they can share their faith with others in person, while 231 students are reaching others online.
Jenna Brown, a campus staff in Lynchburg, VA, tells about leading an online missions trip to reach North Africans. She shared how exciting it was to have live conversations online with Muslims in their own country, to find people who are looking for the meaning of life and who are free to connect with strangers online. She and her students put out Facebook ads which helped surface these interested people. As a result of following through with hundreds of responses, the team had 115 in-depth conversations, and that led to a total of 48 gospel presentations, Amazingly, 4 North Africans came to Christ in areas of the world where on-site teams would normally see no more than 1 in a year believe in Jesus!
Jenna and her team also focused on reaching out to international students from various countries who were studying in the US. They used WhatsApp and offered half hour English conversations that many times led to a chance to share the gospel. Students on the team were gathered together in the same space while they did these conversations, and so they could resource one another when tough questions came up with the international students. We praise God for how He is at work through these online mission trips!
Please join us in praying that God will shine through all of the students involved in this year’s summer mission trips to lead many to faith in Jesus. Please also pray for them to grow in their love for the Lord and desire to make Him known when they return to campus in the fall.