This summer, from mid-July to mid-August, I’ll be going to Northeast China to teach English at a university for a month.  Hopefully through my interactions with my students and the people in the town, I will be able to share the word of God with them or help the newer Christians develop their faith more.  The team I’m going with is composed of 7 other people from all over the U.S, none of whom know each other already.  We’re going to a pretty rural place, and apparently there’s a church already there, but the students at the university don’t really go because they speak a different dialect and there’s a lot of cultural barriers between ethnic groups.  There is a couple that has been there for about 6 years now, who both teach English at the university.  We’ll be working very closely with them in trying to build a Christian presence on campus.  So yeah, I guess now you know basically everything I know about my trip.  Please pray for me whenever you get the chance, because this trip is going to challenge me a lot!  Seriously though…

Pray that…

• I would desire to glorify God above everything else.  If this happens, everything else will fall into place.
• The language barrier would not be too much of an issue.  I cannot say a single word of Mandarin, so pray that I have the motivation to try to communicate with people anyways and not just give up.
• I get along well with my teammates, and not judge them or rank myself against them.
• God would prepare the hearts of the people I’m going to talk to, because no matter how hard I try, it is not in my power to “convert” people.
• I will eagerly and joyfully seek out ways in which I can serve my team, the long term missionaries, and the people of China and put their needs before my own desires.

-Kellie Kress

RSS Feeds provide an easy way to get new content from a website. Many websites have them - news sites like cnn.com, blogs (like those hosted by Xanga, Livejournal, Wordpress, etc.), and even this site - cornellcru.com.  They’re often represented by this symbol: .

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It lets you subscribe to a website with a type of program that will let you know when there is new content available on the website. This program is called an RSS Aggregator (or Reader) - it pulls together new content from multiple different sources. You can access the content directly in the reader, so you don’t even have to go to the website.

What programs do I use?

You use an Aggregator program. Some popular programs, by platform:

• Windows - RSSOwl, SharpReader, Internet Explorer 7 (built in), or Firefox (via Livebookmarks)
• Mac - NetNewsWire Lite, NewsFire, or Firefox (via Livebookmarks)
• Web-based - Google Reader or Bloglines

What can I subscribe to?

CornellCru.com provides many RSS feeds for you to subscribe to. Once you have an Aggregator set up, click one of the links below to subscribe to the appropriate feed, or copy the link’s location and paste into the Aggregator.

• Cru Blog
• Cru Listserv
• Announcements
• Recent Changes

Hey Crusade,

If you’re reading this, you’ve already realized - we’ve started a Crusade Blog! We hope that this will facilitate more and different types of communication between the different parts of the Body… Some things we have in mind:

• Announcements/Descriptions of various events, including discussion of motivation behind certain things (recent things such as our Spring Break trip, Ballyhoo, and Relay For Life come to mind)
• Short articles (written by us or linked to) expounding on teaching from Real Life, clarifying or explaining concepts, providing encouragement and application, and/or looking at things from different perspectives
• Discussion and presentation of various organizational/structural topics (such as with regard to Small Groups, Ministry Teams, Cru Prayer, Frosh Outreach, Fall Retreat, etc.)
• Sharing about what God’s been doing in our lives, to encourage and edify the Body and to ask for prayer

This isn’t meant to replace either the Listserv or announcements at Real Life - it’s meant to supplement them… To provide a glimpse into the thought and motivation behind things. To present things in a more informal, conversational manner. To encourage dialog and get feedback (yes, comments will be enabled! - please use them appropriately).

We do expect to be updating this fairly regularly… Not every post will be long - it might just be a link or a verse with some thoughts attached. And we’ll be asking many of you to contribute - talking about your ministry teams, your small groups, etc.

So keep checking back… You can subscribe to the RSS or Atom feeds to get updates automatically (more explanation of this to come in a future post), and we’ll notify the Listserv for some, but far from all, posts.

-Sheps