Greetings from San Jose! Jeanie and I are back home together after an intense, but very fulfilling 30 days of travel: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Buenos Aires, Argentina and Orlando. Why so many trips in so short a time? I ask myself that question.
My position as Operations Director for CCC Latin America and the Caribbean involves serving all of our national ministries and strategies. We help to train in financial management, leading with information, and measuring results.
In Rio, I joined a meeting of 50 of our top student ministry leaders. These young leaders are all full time missionaries with Campus Crusade and serve in national ministries throughout our region. They were attending a special equipping conference to be able to build movements of evangelism and discipleship. Here we are at the largest university in Rio meeting with the students:
In Santa Cruz, I felt right at home. We haven’t been back to Bolivia since we moved away last August and it was great to reconnect with some old friends. I attended a conference of our Global Church Movements staff from throughout the continent. They were there to help define our role in the growing global movement of church planting. They worked through philosophy of ministry questions, training curricula for church planters and strategies to connect with other mission organizations and denominations to extend the Kingdom of God. The JESUS Film continues to be a key tool and our unique contribution to the global effort. Jeanie and I spent a few days in Orlando right after this conference to be equipped as trainers in our new church planting curriculum.
Last week I was in Buenos Aires working with our finance staff. Argentina has one of our largest ministries with hundreds (thousands?) of students involved. Their financial systems, however, are firmly stuck in the 20th century. I was there to help them clean up their systems and get ready for some new cloud-based systems that will give our leaders around the country instant access to crucial financial information that will help them to make good ministry decisions.
I got home on Saturday and we are enjoying another week with Andrew and his girlfriend, Anna. Andy just finished his freshman year at the University of Florida. Here's a picture of Jeanie with Andrew and Anna.
That’s a real brief tour of what we’ve been up to the last month. We’re still struggling to find our place in ministry here in Costa Rica. I guess it would help if we stayed home for a month or so! Seriously, our biggest prayer request is that God would lead us to just the right ministry connections where we would be able to use our gifts to minister to others and where we would be ministered to as well.
Thanks for standing with us! May God continue to bless you,
Ron
