Eighty percent of Kenya's 30 million people live in rural areas. Most Kenyans are professing Christians, but around 2.5 million Muslims live there as well.

A 9-year-old shepherd boy was dipping a container into the Tana River for water when a lurking crocodile thrashed out at him. The beast locked its toothy jaw onto the boy's right leg. Friends made loud noises and threw stones at the crocodile until it let go, then they dragged Shafin and the remains of his leg onto the riverbank.

Jaco Lourens and his family work with Campus Crusade for Christ in Garissa, Kenya, and were digging wells in a nearby village. Two old men came looking for the mzungu (white man) with the vehicle. They knew Shafin would die on the back of a donkey cart en route to the hospital.

The native South African agreed, driving Shafin away immediately. During the ride, the boy cried more from fear than pain. He had never been close to a white man or been in an automobile.

Shafin's leg was amputated, so his family gave him to Jaco—Shafin was not worth much to them anymore. Nine months later, Shafin started school to learn to read and write. More than a year after the attack, he received an artificial leg as a gift. His community welcomed him back with joyous dancing and laughing.

Because of Shafin's accident, Jaco's faithful service and God's provision, many new relationships have bloomed in Shafin's community. Jaco says they are now more willing to listen to the Christians.
—Elizabeth Bahe

JoePix photographers tell their subjects how to find images on the Internet.

When the parent company for Michael Tremain's marketing company, JoePix, filed for bankruptcy, Michael had to decide if this represented a disaster or an opportunity. He chose opportunity. After careers as an "imagineer" with the Walt Disney Company and a marketing executive with Hard Rock Café, Michael describes his skills as a combination of strategic planning and daydreaming. He also knew God wanted to use those skills for His purposes: "I felt God saying, I've given you some gifts; when are you going to use them to tell people about Me?"

"I've never been good at walking up to people and hitting them in the nose with the gospel," says Michael, even though he has always had a heart for evangelism. And he realized God had just solved his problem—by unemploying him and making resources available. So he founded Blue Sky Ministries, buying the JoePix assets the next day and converting the marketing entity for Fortune 500 companies into a photo-evangelism ministry.

At the same time, Davies Owens was also looking for a paycheck. He knew Michael from First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla. (Michael attended there and Davies had served as associate pastor). He had been helping the techies at Christianity.com, who knew Web sites but needed a pastor's expertise. When Christianity.com was sold, the new owners didn't need a pastor.

Davies' experience with local churches had taught him that in a 24/7 world, people saw church as a one-hour-a-week experience. At Christianity.com he also saw the Internet's potential for connecting the church at large. Michael and Davies quickly joined their expertise under Blue Sky Ministries and launched JoePix as the newest and perhaps most creative evangelistic initiative of the day.

JoePix goes where the people are at large-scale events, taking their pictures, offering the photos free and, in the process, offering to explain the "big picture" of life—how to surrender to Jesus Christ.

They first tested their strategy at The Big Break, Campus Crusade for Christ's spring-break outreach to students at Panama City Beach, Fla. After training some Campus Crusade students in how to use a digital camera, the JoePix team sent them out to the crowds.

When the team met a group of spring-breakers playing football, the Campus Crusade students said, as they had been trained, "We're volunteers with a Christian ministry and we want to bless you with a photo." The players dropped their footballs and started posing for their pictures, a scene repeated all the way down the beach. Many wanted to know more about why JoePix wanted to give them a picture, which gave the photographers openings to present the gospel. Several received Christ.

After JoePix representatives take pictures, they give the subjects cards with a code allowing them to log on to the Web site—www.JoePix.com—to see their photo. Once they access the picture, they jump to a site custom-designed for the event where the picture was taken. They can even arrange for a call from the photographer.

There is no bait-and-switch at the Web site. People get just what they expect, but they also have additional opportunities to check out the gospel message through links to the photographer's Christian testimony or to a gospel presentation. They can even e-mail the photo to friends, who receive a link back to the site.

And they do access the site. Secular marketers, ecstatic with a 5-percent response rate, would drool at the 65-percent rate that JoePix collects.

But most of all, Michael and Davies are concerned with students responding to Jesus Christ.
—Howard Hardegree

To learn more, visit www.joepix.com.

Last year Damtew led Ethiopia's participation in Operation Sunrise Africa.

It took beating somebody up for Damtew Kifelew to become a Christian.

The Ethiopian native grew up in a religion based on works to earn God's favor and merit. Included in his family are the top religious figures in the country. But as a boy, Damtew never knew Jesus personally.

His parents thought he was a "good boy" because he studied hard in school and earned high grades. What they didn't know was that their smart, religious son was actually a member of a gang.

One day, Damtew, who is now Campus Crusade for Christ's national campus ministry coordinator in Ethiopia, was walking down the street with some of his tough gang friends, when a man toting a Gideon Bible approached him.

The man, a Christian, began telling the gangster about Jesus. Damtew acted like he was paying attention, nodding and responding appropriately.

"He thought I was listening," Damtew recounts, "but actually I was thinking of where to hit him so that he would fall in a funny way and make my friends laugh."

The Christian continued to tell the young man about Jesus and the Bible.

After a few minutes, Damtew hauled off and punched the stranger, who dropped his Bible as he fell to the ground. Damtew picked the book up and tossed it into his bag.

He forgot all about it. Then about a year later, the teenager found out that the Ethiopian government was looking for him.

"The government wanted to kill me because I was in a gang," he explains. "I remember thinking, One day I will die, and what will happen after that?"

As he was contemplating that question, he discovered the small Gideon Bible that he had stolen the year before. Damtew began reading it. He was so intrigued by Jesus that he committed his life to following Him.

At that point, Damtew felt compelled to leave his gang. He couldn't follow the Prince of Peace and perform violent, hateful acts.

"When I separated from the gang," says Damtew, "they started persecuting me because they thought that I was going to expose their secrets to the government."

His family persecuted him too, but not for leaving the gang. When his parents learned that he had become a Christian, they disowned him, and refused to give him money even for shoes.

So he wore a pair of shoes with worn-away soles. When it rained, which was often, his feet got soaking wet. Other Christians began helping him, and God provided for all his needs, even for him to go to college.

"I found Damtew as a fresh university graduate," says Bekele Shanko, Campus Crusade's director of Southern and Eastern Africa. "I did not hesitate to challenge him to join Campus Crusade, for I saw in him a great potential to serve the world. That is exactly what he has been doing since he joined in 1999."

Since about 25 percent of the Ethiopians who accept Jesus as their Savior are completely ostracized by their families, Damtew and his wife, Tracie, now round up clothes and money to assist them.

"Damtew is very committed, creative and bold," says Bekele. "I have great respect and appreciation for him."

Damtew appreciates the stranger who told him about Christ in the first place. They have never seen each other since Damtew hit him, and even if they did see each other, they might not recognize one another. "But I will see him in heaven," Damtew says, "and when I do, I want to thank him."
—Jennifer Abegg

FamilyLife | The 30-minute radio program FamilyLife Today recently won "Program of the Year" from the National Religious Broadcasters. Part of Campus Crusade's ministry to families, it also won in 1995, making it the only program to win more than once. More than 5,500 Christian communicators were present at the NRB's convention where the award was presented.

The Jesus Video Project® | At Easter, Hawaii became the third U.S. state in which every home received the gift of JESUS. More than 170 Hawaiian churches united to mail JESUS videos to 480,000 homes. Alabama and South Carolina are the other two states where the video was mailed to every home. To learn more, visit www.jesusvideo.org.

The King's College | J. Stanley (Stan) Oakes Jr., a 31-year staff member who founded Christian Leadership Ministries, was inaugurated as the fourth president of The King's College. Housed in the Empire State Building in New York City, it is Campus Crusade's flagship college. For information about the school, visit www.tkc.edu.


Arizona
Campus Ministry

Having lived on a Sioux reservation for five years as a child, Rita Greenwell understands Native Americans, though she is not one herself. "They've been taught Christianity is a white man's religion," says Rita. "People have done horrible things to them in the name of God."

While attending Northern Arizona University, Rita learned from Laniel Biakeddy, a Navajo Christian student. His words inspired Rita to action.

"Many Navajos wouldn't set foot in a church," said Laniel, explaining that their polytheistic culture isn't anti-Jesus—often they add Him to their list of gods.

Upon graduation, Rita joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ, returned to NAU, and now focuses on Native Americans.

She befriended Suzanne, a Navajo. Rita invited her to dinners, to coffee and to other functions. She also asked Suzanne to do a several-week-long investigative study on the Gospel of John. "She accepted Christ," says Rita, "through reading John and seeing what Jesus is really like.

"College is so strategic," Rita explains. "If we can reach the Native American students here with the gospel, then they go back and reach their reservations."
—Jennifer Abegg


Mississippi
Medical Strategic Network

When dental patients in Jackson, Miss., continuously fail to pay Dr. Bill Boteler for his dental services, he sends them a surprise.

First he attempts to collect the money, but when that doesn't work, Dr. Boteler mails out a notification that reads:

"This letter has been written to inform you that the $ [amount] that you have owed this office has been forgiven. God has graciously forgiven me through His Son, Jesus Christ; therefore I have removed the debt from your account."

Dr. Boteler is involved in the Medical Strategic Network, a segment of Campus Crusade dedicated to equipping health professionals to help reach their spheres of influence for Jesus. Sending out the forgiveness notes is one tangible way of spreading Jesus' love to those he knows.

He says that after he sends out the forgiveness announcement, the debtors often try to pay him. "I don't accept it, or else it looks like a bill-collecting tactic," Dr. Boteler says. "When they insist or leave a check on the counter, I make sure they know that it's going to a charity."

He wants his patients to understand the true meaning of grace, the grace that only comes from God.
—Jennifer Abegg


Kuwait
Military Ministry

"I am in Kuwait. I am with the Marines," wrote a corpsman to Campus Crusade's Military Ministry. "We all don't have Bibles. We would like some help," he wrote on a postcard fashioned of cardboard cut from a box of canned apples.

Requests like these have poured in by the thousands. Since 9/11, the ministry has distributed more than 400,000 Rapid Deployment Kits, which include a camouflage-covered New Testament, a Would You Like to Know God Personally? gospel booklet and a special version of the Daily Light devotional. Packed into a watertight bag, the RDKs are slim enough to fit in soldiers' pockets.

"Right now, we have orders for 42,000 more," says retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Dick Abel, executive director of Military Ministry, "and many of those are from the war zone. In the Armed Forces, the spiritual dimension of one's life [is] extremely important, and certainly with soldiers protecting our freedom and going into harm's way."
—Judy Nelson

For more information about sending RDKs to military personnel, call Sandy Naber at 1-800-444-6006 ext. 256.