Trusting Big at UNCG - Pray for 1st Week of Classes

NC A&T University – Impact Movement The Impact movement at NC A&T is being relaunched.  The campus guidelines are set so groups cannot form until a few weeks into the semester. Please pray that the Lord would connect us to believing studentswho will step up and lead. Pray for Alton who is associate Cru staff and pastor who is leading this relaunch. Wake Forest University – Faculty Commons Please pray for Peteas he will spend part of his time seeking to meet and encourage believing faculty at Wake Forest University. This is a totally new approach to this campus and we really value your prayers!  If you know any believing faculty in the Triad that Pete can connect with, please let us know! Pete and Carra Selent August 2016 Trusting Big at UNC Greensboro Though the heat remains, summer is over!  We just returned from a three-day training for our Bible study and servant team leaders (BSaLT – Bible Study and Leader Training) inMontreat, NC.  The eight bedroom VRBO rental house was filled with stories of summer exploits and fails, laughter, shuffles of calendars, Bibles and journals, and worshipful voices singing praise and adoration.  Their schedules (and ours) are now filled with outreaches, prayer walks and Bible studies. We’re trusting God for big things this year…. Can you join us?  Here are some significant ways we would love to be covered in prayer: Monday, Aug 22 -- Prayer walk on UNCG campus after dinner.  If you are in the area, we would love to have you join us on campus.  Please pray specifically for the Bible studies to grow in the dorms on campus. Tuesday, Aug 23 – Fall Kickoff: UNCG’s massive organizational fair (as shown in picture). Last year we met over 300 new students and several are this year’s new leaders! Thursday, Aug 25 – Freshmen Cru (new strategy): We’re trusting that God will grow four or five freshmen Bible studies out of this weekly gathering!  Pray that over 100 freshmen will join and that God would use these students to transform the campus! Thank you for prayers and partnership in the Gospel!  We are excited to see what God does this semester!  We praise God for you!

From the Mecca of the Airbrushed T-shirt

Praises and Prayer Requests… > Praises for the UNCG students and alumni on mission with us in the Smoky Mountains.  L à R: Moriah (alumni on staff in Charlotte), Harrison, Pete, Micah (3), Carra, Zade (5), Jennifer, Stephanie, Faith (9) and Grace (12). > Praises for the ability to invest in their lives!  Though exhausting, living in the same building as the other ~60 people on this mission gave us access no normal semester allows (often late into the night!). > Pray for the students as they apply the ministry skills they developed over the summer – back to campus! > Pray for a full staff team for the Triad.  God continues to work mightily here and we need more laborers!   Pete and Carra Selent with Grace, Faith, Zade & Micah                                                         July 2016 From the Mecca of the Airbrushed T-shirt The smell of fudge, moonshine, kettlecorn.  Sidewalks filled with tourists, sleepy babies with ice cream mustaches. A sea of faces moving from eating to entertainment and around again. The smell of fudge, moonshine, kettlecorn.  Sidewalks filled with tourists, sleepy babies with ice cream mustaches. A sea of faces moving from eating to entertainment and around again.  What about the faces behind the counters?  Does anyone notice the server’s accent? This overflowing mountain town has captured our hearts!  Gatlinburg, TN would not be able to handle the influx of tourists without the J1’s.  The J1 visa allows students  from all over the world to come serve food, run amuse- ment rides, clean hotel rooms and offer samples of fudge to the American (mostly) tourists.  Over 1000 international students come work in Gatlinburg every summer.  Here they live in cheap hotel rooms with no kitchens, work two jobs and rarely experience much culturally “American” besides what they see and hear on the streets. Anastasia, one of the 100+ J1 students we met, lives near St. Petersburg, Russia and loves American movies.  She knows a ton about the Bible but the idea of a relationship with God who loves her is a foreign concept.  In the background of this photo with Anastasia, Cru students are interacting with international friends from Jamaica, Thailand, China, Moldova, Ukraine, and more.  On this outreach night Harrison (from UNC Greensboro) organized a series of short films to spark spiritual conversations. So far, Anastasia is intrigued but not certain about pursuing a relationship with Christ. Please pray that Anastasia from Russia, Hermonie from China and many others would choose life in Christ before  they return to their home countries. For the Nations, Smokey Mountain Summer Mission 2016 (Pete and Carra back row left, kids front row)

Smokey Mountain Summer Mission, here we come!

Stephanie and Jen (on left) and Harrison (below) are each taking a big leap of faith this summer…  And we are going to be there to watch them take it!

We are really excited about joining 38 students from across the country (including these three from UNCG) in Gatlinburg, TN this summer for seven weeks for the Smokey Mountain Summer Mission (SMSM).   SMSM is a close-knit mission, where we intentionally pursue authentic community with one another while equipping students to share the gospel as a way of life.  We will be joining several other staff families to help disciple, train, equip and do ministry together with the students.

This mission centers around the more than 1,000 international students from all over the world who come to Gatlinburg to work each summer. Students will have a local restaurant, church or amusement park job where they work alongside internationals.  In addition to relational evangelism at work, our outreach involves building friendships, a weekly party, and just having fun, as we share the gospel.  This is a tremendous opportunity to reach the nations for Christ.

We look forward to sharing what the Lord will do at and through the Smokey Mountain Summer Mission.  Thank you for your faithful prayers and generous giving!

                                                          

                                                With Love in Christ,

 Pete & Carra

Snapshots from the last few weeks and going dark...

Today is graduation for UNC Greensboro and most of the students have headed home to prepare for their summer missions, work and school.

In the last few weeks we have hosted multiple staff training meetings, a cookout, two student leader dinners and multiple "over for dinners" and random visits.  This night there were about 35 students we were challenging to step up to leading servant teams and Bible studies for the fall semester.  Our living room seems unusually empty - even for a house with four kids and lots of friends to visit!

Jared came over a bit early with the hope of doing a load of laundry (we granted that request LOL!).  While waiting for the rest of the students to arrive for dinner, Faith offered to teach him how to make rainbow loom bracelets without the loom.  He was a quick study. 

On a different and also exciting note.....
Pete is headed to East Asia next week.  He's going to help give initial lift (10 days) to a five week summer mission trip. We'll be able to share more when he comes back.  But due to the sensitive nature of the location, we are doing all we can to eliminate our public online presence.

Feel free to email us, but our facebook accounts are / will be disabled for a few weeks, our Cru giving account will look very blank (that has already happened) and this very blog may disappear or just have a very striped down appearance.  We appreciate your prayers for Pete's travel safety and my stay home safety and juggling the kiddos, LOL!

Thank you!!  We look forward to sharing more soon!
Love, Carra

The feeding of the student teams

Carseats provide a great way of transporting 2 liter soft drinks. By the way, this carseat can hold one two year old or three two liters soft drinks. A stack of large Papa John's pizzas sit to my right as student leaders for the fall semester make their way into the house.

In the last five days, we've hosted a women's overnight retreat (air mattresses spread all over the house), helped with the impact leadership institute, hosted a dinner for potential leaders, hosted staff mtg and led a training & discussion on the discipline of fasting.

Feeling tired, but a good tired!

For those of you who may be trying to get to our normal "give site," it is currently showing a pretty generic "international staff" as a precaution for an upcoming trip.  We'll be sharing about that in our next prayer letter!

The Power of Cardboard

In the week leading up to Valentines Day, UNCG did a huge campus-wide outreach with Valentines Day cards, prayer gatherings, a worship night and lots of spiritual conversations.  One way the students initiated conversations was through an outreach day of cardboard testimonies.  Here's a video of some of those. We hope you find it a blessing!

You can click here to see the video in case it fails to display. 

Encounter Conference

What a great and super busy encounter conference. We've been challenged by wonderful speakers and had opportunities to share our hearts with the students. Tomorrow about 1000 high school and college students will literally pray in the new year. Here's a photo from a beautiful worship time on the opening night. Thank you for your prayers!