Karl & Liesl Kranich

That’s how long I (Liesl) have been on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.  What an awesome privilege it’s been.  Thanks to all of you who have been a part, some of you from the very beginning, when a new UF graduate called you and asked you to join her in ministry.  You’ve supported me through 7 years serving our overseas staff with International Ministries, and Karl and me together since 1998 with his service in meeting the CCC world technology needs.  You’ve prayed for us and been God’s provision for our daily needs and encouraged us through our hard times.  I can’t tell you how blessed we feel to be allowed to serve God long-term and to be cared for by such a wonderful team of people.

I can tell you why we feel so blessed, though.  The year is different, but the vision they share is the same one that led me to join CCC 15 years ago.  Our student bands are now on the road and emailing back some amazing updates.  Please pray for our students to grow as they reach others for Christ.

Young Isaac 7/2008:  “We’ve had some quirkiness so far, but it hasn’t been anything that God hasn’t gotten us through, so even though we’ve had a hiccup or two, it hasn’t stopped us from reaching the world for Christ. We’ve presented the gospel to over 150 people and have had over 30 say they want to know more about God and have had at least 12 say they are now brothers and sisters in Christ. We will be heading to Boston, NYC, New Jersey, and Upstate NY in the next week, so pray for us…”

Mangofish 7/21/08:  “… we traveled to Medora, North Dakota, with the Badlands summer project, where we played in the city’s center square! We had a big turnout, with people wandering up after hearing the music from other places in town. One girl named Rachel said that she started a relationship with Christ that night, which was especially exciting to the people on the Medora summer project who have been building a relationship with her. A man named Rod shared with us the story of how he had grown up in the church, but wandered away after a terrible injury. After even more personal (and recent) tragedies, on the night of our concert, he was driving through North Dakota and felt God calling him to go to Medora. He stopped and came to our show, where, as we were tearing down, he approached us. Sarah, one of our vocalists, got to pray for him, and he said he felt greatly encouraged and revived.

“Right now we’re in Great Falls, Montana, at the Malmstrom Air Force Base. This is our third day here, with one show last night, and another in a few hours.  Last night, we took the place of the base’s casual church service and our audience commented they were especially grateful to hear a non-country music concert. … Tomorrow we’re leaving for Yellowstone, to work with the summer project there.”

Soulseed 7/21/08:  “our first concert was an evangelistic set at a church in st. louis.  it was awesome.  the church itself used to be a synagogue.  the black church bought it over 100 years ago, but they left it in its original state.  there are still stars of David in the windows.  the concert was amazing.  the enemy definitely tried to throw us off.  the sound system started acting up even though it was fine during sound check.  a couple mics stopped working and a speaker started to smoke.  turns out that we were plugged into the same circuit as the fluorescent lights.  but regardless of that mess, nine people gave their lives to Christ.  one boy wrote on his comment card - i really really need Jesus. it was so heartwarming.”

Level 3:16 7/24/08:  “So far, we have had much success on the road.  We have had four evangelistic concerts and 30 people have made decisions to know Christ personally! The comments on the comment cards have been so encouraging, not only do people love the music, but we’ve had youth writing things like, “your testimony made me cry.  After hearing it I really had to examine my life and I ended up rededicating myself to the Lord”.  How awesome is our God?! A way that you all can be praying for us is to pray that we don’t grow weary in well-doing. So far, we have had such a hectic schedule that we haven’t gotten much sleep and when we do, it’s not necessarily the most restful sleep, I’m sure ALL of you can relate to that!  LOL.

Please pray for the summer project bands as they head out on tour from July 17 to August 3.  Here they are…

Tim Keller wrote an excellent article for the Spring edition of Leadership Journal titled, “The Gospel in All its Forms“.

I’ll just tease you with the last paragraph:

Today there are many who doubt that there is just one gospel. That gives them the warrant to ignore the gospel of atonement and justification. There are others who don’t like to admit that there are different forms to that one gospel. That smacks too much of “contextualization,” a term they dislike. They cling to a single presentation that is often one-dimensional. Neither of these approaches is as true to the biblical material, nor as effective in actual ministry, as that which understands that the Bible presents one gospel in several forms.

Athletes in Action’s successful outreach web site has been retooled for the Summer Olympics. With a new look and testimonies from some of this year’s olympians, AIA is hoping to expose the estimated 4 billion worldwide spectators to the gospel. Help spread the word on your personal blog or Web site by linking to www.beyondtheultimate.org.

Campus Crusade has also recently expanded the number of discipleship materials available in the Training and Growth section of www.ccci.org.  Check out the Transferable Concepts and other classic CCC resources.

While you’re at www.ccci.org, read about the exciting happenings from summer mission projects around the world.

Hey, Y’all!

This is my first time writing from Indiana.  As you can tell by the “y’all”, I’m not totally acclimated to being a Hoosier yet, but we are so happy to be here.  Some praises include:

• safe travel for us all as we drove across the country.  We knew the furniture wouldn’t come quickly, so we took a slower pace and let Anja have her first Smoky Mountains experience as well as Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
• When we got here, Anja was able to jump right in to the same VBS program she had to miss when we left Florida!  What a blessing for her to have fun with kids learning about God that first week here.
• Our stuff was delayed but finally got here this past Monday and so far almost nothing’s been broken
• Our Florida house just closed on Thursday!!!  What a huge blessing.

We’ve been keeping very busy between Karl working at the office and both of us working hard at settling in and learning where to find things here in town (Karl’s already a regular at Lowes).  We still need to study for our drivers’ license tests, and a bunch of other stuff, so you could pray for good time management and prioritizing for both of us.  Also, Karl brought a cold home and gave it to me, so we’d love to get better without needing to put finding a doctor 1st on our list of things to do.

Now for some of what’s happening at Keynote!  I was going to write this myself, but this e-mail we got said it better so here goes…

First, Keynote is a crazy place these days!  As I write, we have 2 bands rehearsing and preparing music for overseas trips – one heading to New Zealand and one to Israel!  Yesterday (June 17th), 75 students arrived to begin what we hope will be one of the greatest adventures of their lives.  Keynote will have 5 bands (plus a media team and a film team), Impact will have 2 bands… here we go!

Think about this for a moment: last summer we shared the Gospel with nearly 6000 people and saw 248 indicated decisions for Christ – with only 5 bands.  With 7 bands heading out this summer (11 including the international teams and the office teams), we can only wonder what God might do! PLEASE be praying for God to do amazing things and change many lives this summer – ours as well as those with whom we share the Gospel.

Our welcome dinner was with the summer project students.  One of the bands, called Destino, focuses on reaching the Latin community and I discovered that one of the students goes to UF (Go Gators!) and another, Andrea, is here from Argentina and is the product of ministry of a couple of friends of mine who were CCC staff at UF when I was a student.  Later they moved to Argentina and the rest is history.   Who knows what lasting fruit will come from these students this summer?

Thanks for your love and support for us in so many ways.  God bless you!

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