Hey y’all!  We’ve had so much neat stuff happening I didn’t know where to start.  Over the last month, Keynote artists have been traveling to various parts of the U.S. with stops at military installations, juvenile detention centers, college campuses, high school settings as well as a few community events. More than 1300 people indicated a decision to begin a relationship with Jesus as a result of the 38 events during the month of September alone!  Here’s an abbreviated “news feed” of what Keynote has seen God do in October so far:

10/1/08:  “One of our most memorable concerts was at a substance abuse center called Teen Challenge in Maryland.  During the show something amazing happened.  When Robert shared his testimony, a lady started screaming at the top of her lungs. “John!  John!” We could hear the desperation in her voice and everyone started looking around trying to see what was wrong.  Seconds later a few men took off running toward the street.  The lady was screaming because her little boy lost control of himself while running downhill toward oncoming traffic, and she was too far away to catch him.  But for some reason, the boy suddenly stopped a few feet away from the road.  We believe it was God who kept that child from his certain death.  This concert was an on-time reminder of God’s ultimate sacrifice for us.  How, like the child, we are running towards our certain death but our loving and gracious God stepped in to save us.  We praise God upon every remembrance of this powerful, real-world illustration of His love for us.”  Impact Band

10/8/08:  “The neat thing about partnering with this small campus was that their administration actually came to the Cru group and asked them to plan some events for homecoming!  In our experience as students involved and staff with the campus ministry, this was completely astonishing and totally worth us driving all the way.  As a cool side note, the student leader of Cru got elected as Homecoming King!” Blue Sky Nine

10/26/08:  “We wanted you to know the [Family Life Marriage] conference ended up going INCREDIBLY well!  Not only did my voice completely come back, but we heard from the conference team that 47 people out of the 500 who attended indicated a decision to receive Christ! “ The Boyds (family band with Keynote and speakers at CCC marriage conferences)

Pretty great, huh?!  And there’s more.  Not only do we see God at work here in the U.S., but many of our partner ministries are seeing amazing things happen in their spheres of influence. We have the unique opportunity to gather some of these leaders for the first International Directors’ Summit at our facility in Westfield, Indiana. On November 1st, over 25 leaders from 12 countries (such as Brazil, South Africa, Germany and Australia among others) will join together for this historic event. This four day summit will allow us to explore how we can work together to use training and creative outreaches to help build impassioned spiritual movements in many countries around the world.

Karl and I are excited to be hosting a couple from South Africa while they attend the Summit.  We will also be diving into Keynote’s new staff training for most of the month of November, so you can pray for good health and energy to stay high as we add a lot to our schedules for the next few weeks.  Please pray for the Summit, as well, since so many people will be traveling to get here and will need to function in their second language and be healthy to get the most out of this time.  Pray that God would work “beyond our imagining” in what flows out of this time.  God bless you!

Now that Anja’s in school, I can go into the office (I’ll be getting trained in applicant evaluation this week!  Pray for me and hear first hand when our bands come back and share what God’s doing through Keynote.  Since you aren’t able to come in with me, here’s a letter our Director of Development, Rich Dundore, wrote recently that was full of reminders of God at work:

As I reflected yesterday on the events of September 11, 2001, I was reminded about the special place in my heart for our military personnel and their families as they operate in this ever-changing world.  As a ministry, Keynote also has a strong desire to reach out to these men and women who serve our country so selflessly.

While pondering this historic anniversary in our nation’s history, I received an email from Rahlo, Keynote’s hip-hop artist with the blackSoil project.  He shared with me that he had performed at a military base a few weeks ago.   Approximately 2,200 soldiers filled the auditorium for the two outreach concerts that day.  The chaplain provided the following results from the comment cards that were turned in:

123 individuals asked to speak with someone about spiritual things
119 expressed interest in studying the Bible with someone
56 indicated that they gave their lives to Christ that day!

The chaplain’s office also mentioned that the number of lives impacted was much larger than they normally see in outreaches there.  And they added, ‘We can only hope and pray that the ground is fertile and they will blossom fully into beautiful trees.’  Let’s all join them in that prayer!

Keynote’s aggressive rock band, Giants of Silence, also visited there just last week.  In their two outreaches at this post of 23,000 soldiers, they were able to connect with another 2,000 men and women who responded very well to their music and message.  While the band was not able to utilize comment cards this time, the responsiveness of the soldiers was evident.  Lindsay, the band’s drummer, made the following observations:

After presenting the gospel, we always play ‘All Around Me’ by Flyleaf.  Soldiers were holding up their hands, singing along and yes… worshipping God all over the place.  Here are some of the lyrics from that song:
‘My hands are searching for you, my arms outstretched towards you,
I feel you on my fingertips… this fire rising through my being, burning… I’m not used to seeing you
I’m alive, I’m alive.
I can feel you all around me, thickening the air I’m breathing,
Holding on to what I’m feeling, savoring this heart that’s healing…’

God is at work in our military!  Thanks so much for your support and prayers that allow Keynote to share God’s love with these spiritually hungry soldiers.  If you would like to learn more about these two Keynote groups as well as all of our other artists, please visit www.keynotefuel.com.

God is so good!  No matter what we hear on the news about the war or the economy, God is in control.  We can trust Him, with our fears and our realities.  These soldiers understand fears and realities well, and so we pray for them, and for ourselves to grow in our ability to cling to God through everything.

As for us, we have been enjoying watching Anja with her new big girl Bible.  She can read now, so we got it for her birthday and have been amazed at how often we’ll find her looking up a scripture reference to read it for herself.  We pray she will continue to grow in her faith, and that we’ll parent by example.  God bless you!

When I’m sitting at my computer, I often need to remind myself that I’m reaching people with the gospel, for God’s glory.  That’s where we find our motivation, and where we try to focus in these newsletters, also.  But this time I’d like to tell you about two stones that I’ve laid since coming to Keynote…

When I arrived, I found that the main computers had battery backup (UPS), but that the battery backup systems were not adequate for what was plugged into them.  There were a lot of lightning storms this spring and summer, and one computer had rebooted over 20 times due to power problems.  One of my first projects was to install a bigger battery backup unit and program the systems to shut down automatically when the building power has been out for a while.  This is a huge safety net for our important information.

Keynote was backing up most our important files each night in case the main computers crashed, but there were several crucial files that were not being backed up.  Also, the backups were not being stored offsite, which is an important step in case the main office suffers fire or storm damage.  We’re now backing up everything and keeping a copy offsite.

My next big task is to come up with a strategic plan for technology at Keynote, and to propose a budget.  Please pray that God would grant me wisdom—I need it!

Thank you so much for your prayers during this time of transition.  We are really enjoying life in Indiana and our new friends and church.  Anja is enjoying school, and just had a fun birthday weekend with my family visiting.  Please continue to pray that we would organize our lives well as we get involved in small groups and more activities for Anja.

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Final Keynote Summer Project report:

• 8 teams — 7 bands and 1 short film team.
• We traveled 23,407 miles.
• We had 93 concerts.
• We saw 13,090 men, women, and children hear about Christ.
• The angels rejoiced over the 349 new decisions for Christ.

If you don’t know what this is about, start with our post called Saving Lives with Umbilical Cord Blood.

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.

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.

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.

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!

If you need our new address or phone number, just click on Contact Us and let us know!

You click to purchase the downloadable version of the book at the normal price, then enter the monthly coupon code before finishing the purchase. The purchase page shows that you’ll be charged nothing, and it’s been working well for me for many months!

Of course, they also have tons of great books available for purchase!

We are finally on the move! It’s been five months of Orlando house prep, showing, support raising, and packing, and the end is here. The picture above is the Keynote office in Westfield, Indiana, where I (Karl) am writing this letter and waiting to close the deal on our new Indiana home on June 6.

After closing and a few days of working on the house, I’ll fly back to Orlando for some final packing and then the movers will arrive on June 11. Liesl, Anja, and I will say goodbye to our Orlando home and take our minivan north.

We’d appreciate your prayers for the travel and all of the other details—it has already been an adventure. Last Wednesday, Liesl and I left Orlando at 6:44am in our Chevy Prizm and planned to drive 16 hours straight to southern Indianapolis. We had just made it into southern Indiana when the oil pressure light started flickering and then lit steadily. We had enough oil and were not overheating, but decided that it was not worth losing the engine to make it to our hotel. We drove a few more miles and then got a different hotel for the night. The next morning, AAA towed the car to a mechanic near the Keynote office, and we were able to borrow a car for the day. We made it to our new house orientation meeting, which went well. We’re thankful that the car trouble didn’t cause more problems.

Please pray:

1. that we would remember all of the details that need to be taken care of in Florida and Indiana, and not be affected too much by stress.
2. for a smooth transition for Anja.
3. for safe travel.
4. for the sale of our Orlando house to complete soon (buyer financing has been delayed).

Thank you for your partnership with us in this adventure!

Once again we’ve been getting incredible emails to pray and praise God for and this one was particularly good.  We met Rasool when we were in the office a few months ago.  He works with The Impact Movement, a partner ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ that is reaching out to the African American community.  We hope you will be as encouraged to pray and praise with us after hearing this story!

Thanks so much for your prayers for us while on the road. God answered them big time.

The scenario was more challenging than I imagined. The debauchery and sin that filled the streets were unlike anything I’d seen in person. It was so raunchy on the street we couldn’t even bring Ire’Ana (our 10-year old daughter) outside the hotel. But in the midst of darkness God moved.

Not only did we get to do both sets for an hour at the times we were told, God gave us favor with the hip-hop promoter, Ali, who had called me about us having 20 minutes to perform. He was cordial, and accommodating the whole time! He even told people to check out our concert!

We were supposed to go on @ 7:30p. It started raining @ 5pm. They thought about canceling the night’s concerts. They decided to wait it out. It stopped. We went on and saw lightning all around us, winds picking up - but no rain! It was like that the whole concert! By the end of the set Ali’s crew of hip-hop deejays were all on their feet clapping to our songs! Right after we were done and had put half the stuff in the trailer, rain came down hard and fast! Amazing!

Totals from both concerts:
83 comment cards collected
19 decisions to receive Christ
12 interested in talking to someone
5 led to Christ after outreach concert

The next evening, Ali called me back asking if we might be available to do a concert in June in Alabama where he’s from! We can’t do it b/c of schedule, but look @ that turn around.

We are truly grateful for all that occurred. Thanks again,
Rasool

Thanks for praying for Rasool and his band and the people they are able to reach.  God bless!

Praise God!! 

(Keep praying that nothing else goes wrong  )

Please pray with us that either the county would relax these restrictions, or that we could find another buyer soon.  Most of all, that we would be able to trust God with this.

We also wanted to let you know about a bunch of things that we’ve been adding to our web site.  On the list of links to the right, we’ve added new sections of resources about umbilical cord blood donation and dealing with infertility and loss.  Up top (and on the “Pages” list), you’ll see a new link to a page about Keynote that includes a bunch of videos.  We’ve also updated the “Family Photos” — you can even watch our house being built by clicking on the “Matterhorn Drive” set.  Feel free to check out anything you’re interested in.

Why does it have to hurt so much?

You go about your business every day, doing what you normally do, and smiling at people around you. Then when you least expect it, the sadness is back.

You look at a stranger, or overhear a conversation, or remember a time, and suddenly the tears come again. And you wonder if this will ever stop.

You listen to people chatting and whining about petty things. You’re tempted to blurt out, “Don’t you realize what’s really important?” But you say nothing.

You hear people complain about their kids. You want to say, “Don’t you realize how lucky you are?” But you keep quiet.

Someone remarks, “At least you have another child to enjoy.” Your head knows that. But your heart feels an emptiness for the dream that was lost and the unique person you will never have a chance to know.

It seems everywhere you go, there’s another happy young couple or an expectant mother, and you wonder again why life is so unfair.

People ask, “How are you doing?” You’re tempted to tell the truth … but you don’t want to make them uncomfortable or force them to deal with sad things today. So you say, “I’m fine.”

Does anyone really understand?

God does. He knows exactly what you are feeling. And He’s always ready to listen and help you through it, whatever “it” is.

Some people do understand. They know how it feels when a part of you is gone. Even after months and months have passed, and you still would like to talk about it, remember these people. They really want to be there for you, and they will listen.

You never forget. But you realize that’s OK, because why would you want to forget the love you felt for a precious part of you?

A time comes when you realize the good days outnumber the bad, when the tears don’t come as often, when you can smile and really be smiling on the inside, too. But now, that time seems far off.

Why does it have to hurt so much?

If you haven’t been to Campus Crusade’s main web site at www.ccci.org lately, check out the new design. I think the team did a great job.

You’ll find:

• Fresh new look
• Over 100 country profiles
• Training for spiritual mentoring
• Bold photographs, riveting stories
• Improved search and navigation
• Locate ministries near you
• Tools for evangelism
• Conveniently manage your financial giving