Karl & Liesl Kranich

Thank you for praying for my trip to Thailand!  Five of us from Keynote traveled to Bangkok last Tuesday and returned this Monday and Tuesday.  We enjoyed safe travel, productive meetings with coworkers from all over the world, and protection from the flooding.

We brought information about a new tool called MissionHub that is beginning to be used within Campus Crusade for Christ to connect students to local ministries, and to make sure that every interested person is contacted by student leaders.  One of our team led a session on “Using Social Media to Accelerate Your Local Movement”.

Others from around the world brought information about the tools and strategies that they’re using to reach people and build communities online.  It was inspiring to hear about the ways that God’s name is being lifted up through web sites, blogs, apps, film, and video.  We strengthened connections and made new ones.

Please continue to pray that we can make the most of the tools and relationships that God has given us.  If we can figure out how to work together better, we will accelerate the fulfillment of the Great Commission even more!

And please pray for the people of Thailand and our Campus Crusade for Christ staff there.  Since late October, deadly floods have invaded Thailand, forcing Thai CCC staff to postpone ministry activities in order to help displaced people. Though native to Thailand’s heavy rain season, many of these staff members returned to find their own homes damaged, and in some cases, totally destroyed.  If you would like to help them financially, please see help.ministrynetconference.com.

Each year Open Doors releases the World Watch List, a detailed analysis of Christian persecution worldwide. In this free resource, countries are evaluated and ranked according to the severity of persecution that occurred in the past year.

Check out the list at http://members.opendoorsusa.org/worldwatchlist/ and pray for Christians in these countries!

Happy belated Thanksgiving! We hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating and that you had a chance to really be thankful (the preparations and shopping can make for a crazy time). We had our first Thanksgiving at our own home and loved it.

It was especially nice to slow down after a full month. Keynote’s Vision Event went sooo well. If you weren’t able to watch Karl’s live broadcast you can see it now at www.keynoteconnection.org.

The weeks before and after that event also saw us hosting Tom and Harro, two CCC Australia Interns! They just released an iPhone app to help others share the gospel. They took the most widely used booklet for understanding who Jesus is, Would You Like to Know God Personally?, and made it available through the iTunes store (since it’s the Australian version, it has slight differences from the American booklet).

Similar to Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws, Knowing God Personally is the perfect tool for helping people understand how to have an intimate relationship with God. People can download the application free of charge. Harro grins, “It’s a God thing because we didn’t advertise it. We placed just one wallpost on Facebook and it took off from there. The first week the Lord allowed us to have 350 downloads from 31 countries.”

We had them come in to brainstorm ways we can use modern media to communicate the Gospel in more creative ways (and do programming). Keynote’s New Media Labs has been working on God Tools, another app for iPhones (and soon for Android phones). God Tools offers several Campus Crusade for Christ gospel booklets and the great articles from EveryStudent.com. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can download Knowing God Personally and God Tools for free from the app store.

This month we’ve also had a number of conversations that reminded us just how challenging it can be for most of us to know how to clearly communicate how to begin a relationship with God. Even long-time believers find it hard to know what out of the whole Bible and their lives to focus on when talking to someone who doesn’t know God.

Simple outlines of the Gospel can be a big help.  Whether you get an app for your phone, carry a paper copy with you, or use some other method, the important thing is to be ready to share, in a simple way, what God says. I find that just getting the 4 points in my head (and keeping them there) can make it so much easier to know I’ve clearly shared what’s important when I have limited time. When in doubt, just read through the booklet with someone!

Most important is praying and trusting God to work in people’s lives. He’s the life changer and he can use all of us as we step out in faith to share our own stories of God in our lives. You don’t have to “do it perfectly” for God to use you to share His love with someone. We’ll be praying for all of us to trust God and reach out this Christmas season.

If you missed our program on Saturday evening, you can watch it online here.

It was a wonderful evening celebrating what God has done, is doing, and will do through Keynote!

The Peoples Connection was formed by a group of ministries that wants to encourage American Christians to reach their neighbors who are from other countries.

Among other resources, they offer DVDs that contain the JESUS Film in many languages.  For example, the “All Nations ‘JESUS’ DVD: Middle Eastern Languages” contains the film in 16 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, English, Farsi, French, Hausa, Indonesian, Kurdish (Behdini), Kurdish (Sorani), Punjabi, Russian (Central Asian), Somali, Turkish, Urdu, and Uyghur.

Check out this wonderful ministry at www.reachingthenationsamongus.org.