Albanian students and staff members discuss how to apply a message about finding Christ in the midst of the storms of life.

The hotel dining room overflowed with excitement--literally and figuratively. Nearly 300 Albanian university students at the Campus Crusade for Christ conference in Pogradec crammed every available seat and space, spilling onto the terrace. They sang and clapped at levels rivaling the drums and amplified instruments, singing as if making up for the years their government banned public worship.

They overcame many obstacles to attend. They survived a five-hour, pothole-ridden, mountainous ride on rickety buses, with hairpin turns that made many students sick to their stomachs. They endured a hotel without a single working shower and with intermittent water supply. And they ignored the specter of final exams the following week.

The scene reflects the movement of God's Spirit in and through the Albanian campus ministry. Its origins in 1992 included a group of spring-breaking American students speaking in classrooms at the University of Tirana (the capital). The campus ministry staff team now consists of 28 Albanian nationals and five Americans on four campuses in four cities.

"When I see and hear those students," says Don Mansfield, who directed Campus Crusade's work in Albania from its inception until 1997 and who still works closely with the current leaders, "I think about 1991, when there were only 16 known believers in Christ in the entire country. It's amazing what God has done." —Paul Schwarz

Christians at Cornell go into their dorms with a heart for God, a heart for each other and a heart for those who don't know God.

Last year just two students became Christians through Campus Crusade for Christ at Cornell University. This year 22 turned to Christ during the fall semester alone. The number of students involved in the ministry--140--has nearly doubled since last year, and a growing number of non-Christians attend Friday-evening outreach meetings.

"I think what we're seeing is the beginning," exclaims Sarah Kim, a bubbly senior studying nutritional sciences at Cornell University. "God is moving on our campus."

Nestled in the Finger Lakes region of New York, Cornell provides soil for the intellectual development of some 20,000 young minds. But now spiritual seeds are growing into fruit far sweeter than the spiritual skepticism often associated with Ivy League schools.

Sarah recounts how the dire need to pray for the campus gripped her and a few other Cornell students this past summer when they attended a Campus Crusade conference at Colorado State University. "I [thought] one night at CSU, Wow, could a revival happen at Cornell? A couple of us shared what our summer had been like and what God was doing in it.

"There were times I had to drop all [other activities] because I couldn't not pray. Someone else shared, 'Wow, that's exactly what's been happening with my summer!' Then someone else said, 'Yeah, me too!'"

In the end, five Cornell students spoke up, and the group realized that God had been leading each person the same way.

Back at school, Sarah cultivated her conviction as she and other students held a prayer meeting at the beginning of the year. "We had a desire to pray for everyone on the campus by name," she recalls. "We got the master printout of the students. There were 56 names on each sheet, and as people came in during the concert of prayer, [we gave] each person a sheet." By the end of the meeting, nearly everyone had been prayed for.

Since then, students on campus have responded more enthusiastically to the gospel. When Christian students conducted spiritual-interest surveys in dormitory lunch lines, hundreds of people wanted to know more about a personal relationship with God.

Sarah and the women in her small-group Bible study went to explain the gospel to some of those people, and found that others in the dorms wanted to talk as well. More than she had time for, in fact. "Many people asked me to come back to talk longer," she says.

Even future Cornellians have come to know Christ this year. "I had lunch with a pre-freshman," Sarah says. "He's coming to Cornell for his freshman year. He had been going to a Bible study and a church. I started to share the gospel with him. I couldn't get it out fast enough for him! He accepted Christ."

As the spiritual fruit at Cornell multiplies, so does the confidence that God is at work. "It is just a beginning," reiterates Sarah. "There's much more to come throughout this campus." —Mike Clapper

Rebecca and Charles Gilmer with, left to right, Karis, 10, Micah, 17, Caleb, 8, Joy, 6, Daniel, 13, and Jared, 15.

At home, Charles Gilmer parents six children with his wife, Rebecca, while at the office, he leads a national ministry within Campus Crusade for Christ. A plateful like that drives him to dependence.

Charles learned early about depending on God. He grew up as a preacher's kid in an African-American church, hearing the gospel every week in church. In a sixth-grade Sunday-school class on Palm Sunday, he prayed with his father, committing his life to Jesus.

By the time he left for college in 1977, Charles knew he wanted to serve God full time, but wasn't sure how. Then, as a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, the engineering/applied science major went to Daytona Beach, FL, on a Campus Crusade outreach held over spring break.

That week he and several other students traveled to a nearby, historically African-American college, where they introduced peers to a personal relationship with Jesus. Charles saw the need not just for the message but for messengers as well. "From that point on, I was coming on staff [with Campus Crusade]," he says.

In the fall he proposed to Rebecca, a fellow Penn student, and they married the following summer.

Soon after graduating, the couple joined Campus Crusade and moved to Atlanta to work with the Campus Ministry. In the summer of 1984, they pioneered a ministry at Howard University, a traditionally African-American campus in Washington, DC. They served there eight years, then moved to Orlando, FL, to direct the Campus Ministry's extension of InterCultural Resources.

ICR provided a national platform for Charles' passion to reach African Americans and other ethnic minorities, which represent one out of every four American college students. "If things were going to change," he says, "we needed to change things on a broader scale."

Some of the broad changes he spearheaded include IMPACT, a biennial Christmas conference aimed at African-American college students, and a controversial yet effective method of developing ethnic leaders on campuses called contextualization (see Worldwide Challenge September/October 1997, pp. 16-21).

At home, Charles practices what he preaches. "We are very explicit about being African American," he says.

"I am implementing the same kinds of principles with my kids that I encourage staff members to implement with their students on campus," says Charles, "in terms of embracing their African heritage and appreciating the privilege to be an American, [all] for the sake of the Kingdom of God."

Charles also models godly dependence by reading the Bible to his children every night. He drags a chair from his study into the tiled hallway so all six kids can hear from their bedrooms.

Charles and his wife also share a routine of praying together. "We really do feel very dependent on God to protect them, to keep them and allow them to grow up in the way that would honor and glorify Him," Charles explains.

Though his job requires heavy travel, Charles works hard to put his family first. If he can squeeze the trip into one day, he'll do it; otherwise, the family man tries to limit travel to one or two nights away at a time.

Sometimes that requires some juggling, but Charles understands the secret of keeping everything in balance: You've just got to know Whom to depend on. —Erik Segalini

Campus | Around 3,000 Christian college students from 100 campuses nationwide plan to crash the spring-break party at Panama City Beach, FL. From March 4 to April 7, students and staff members will take Jesus to the beach during an outreach called "The Big Break." Last year, 461 beach-goers received Christ during The Big Break. To join them, call 1-800-825-9551.

FamilyLife | FamilyLife and The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood will co-sponsor a conference, Building Strong Families in Your Church, training church leaders and pastors to respond to cultural influences that tear Christian families apart. To register for the March 20 to 22 event near the Dallas-Forth Worth airport, call (800) 358-6329.

Prayer | Last fall campus staff members in California, Arizona and Hawaii began praying that God would allow them to make an impact on 100 of the 454 campuses within their region. Since then, Campus Crusade ministries have begun on 15 new campuses. Students on 41 others have expressed interest in doing the same.



Campus Ministry
College Station, TX

When the logs set up for the Texas A&M University bonfire collapsed last fall, several Campus Crusade for Christ staff members and students were involved. Tim Kurlee, a 17-year-old freshman, was crushed in the accident and died. Dean Martinez, in line to buy tickets to the football game against Texas when police cars raced past, followed them to the site. He helped move logs, found coats to warm the injured and prayed with others.

At 7:00 that morning, Mark Hurt, director of Campus Crusade at Texas A&M, heard the report and headed to the hospital to comfort family members. That afternoon he helped call a prayer vigil that drew about 4,000. Later that evening, a university-sponsored memorial attracted about 18,000. After the speakers left the platform, people stayed. Soon, someone sang Amazing Grace. Almost everyone joined arms and began singing. "It was as if the Lord needed to be there to touch people," says Mark.

Looking to the future, Mark doesn't pretend to understand why God allowed this to happen. Rather, he sees the tragedy as a mandate to move forward and to be there for people. —Howard Hardegree


Josh McDowell
Elkhart, IN

When Kathy Hoff volunteered to help collect teddy bears in the Indiana/Michigan area last year, she quickly noticed the high cost of getting them to a Lancaster, PA, warehouse. The bears would go to thousands of needy children in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine as part of Josh McDowell's Operation Bearlift.

"We realized we would waste so much money shipping them," says Kathy, part owner of Hy-Line Enterprise, Inc., a trucking transport firm. "I thought, Why don't we fill one of our trailers since we are going right by there anyway?"

Fill it they did. And the Hy-Line driver was amazed at the number of bears Kathy and Pauline Yoder (a Josh McDowell Ministry affiliate staff member) had collected. He questioned what made the difference in these generous people's lives. As a result, he started attending church regularly.

This year, Hy-Line transported 25,000 teddy bears--each wearing a gospel necklace made of colored beads--that were later distributed to lonely children in the former Soviet Union. After the children received their bears, Bearlift volunteers told the gospel story using the colored beads. —Lisa Master


JESUS Film
Thailand

Weerarut Hongsa traveled to Kanchanaburi, a Thai province known for attractive scenery, along with 134 other Campus Crusade for Christ staff members. Traveling west from Bangkok, the group spent 11 days among Kanchanaburi's modest population.

Their goal: to bring Christ to as many of the 770,000 Buddhists in Kanchanaburi as possible. Buddhism is the state religion of Thailand and enjoys legal preferences. More than 93 percent of the Thai people worship Buddha.

During those 11 days, about 5,500 people heard the gospel by viewing the JESUS film or through personal explanation by the staff members. As Weerarut and the team left Kanchanaburi, they knew of more than 600 people who had placed their faith in Christ. They also left about 2,000 copies of the JESUS film with religious and governmental authorities.

In addition, a Thai radio station used 30 minutes of airtime to interview three of the staff members. Through the ensuing week the interview aired three times to an estimated audience of 50,000 to 100,000 people, all of whom heard the gospel of grace. —Mike Clapper