We don’t often write about personal things in our prayer letters because we want your prayer focus to be on the ministry work and the Gospel going to the Jewish people. However, the last few months have been extraordinarily difficult and stressful. 

In fact, all of us leaders of Planet Zula (our Israeli hosting network) are experiencing heavy spiritual attacks. Each of our families are going through difficult trials, and we would super appreciate your prayers for us:

THE KERSTETTERS

• we have all been experiencing health problems on top of Carissa’s chronic illnesses
• we recently discovered our house is full of hidden toxic mold, and we need to move out as soon as possible, but we can’t afford housing suitable for Carissa’s sensitivities
• our financial support is extremely low. It is imperative that we raise more funds to continue in ministry

THE RYANS

• stress from recent move across the country
• grief from loss of loved one
• severe insomnia

THE THOMASES

• currently under legal attack, and in danger of losing their visas and being kicked out of the country
• going through personal family difficulties

We are tempted to be discouraged, but with this much attack all at the same time we must remember that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” (Ephesians 6:12).

God could use Planet Zula powerfully to reach Israel with the Gospel, and the enemy does not want us to succeed. God wants Israel to be saved (Romans 11:26), and even the gates of hell will not prevail against His plan.

Please pray that we each stand strong in our faith in Jesus through these difficult times, pray for our families, our health, and our marriages; and that God would protect and provide for us during this season. Pray that God would use these trials to forward the Gospel and that He would be glorified through it all.

Thank you so much for your support through prayer,

BJ, Carissa and Ari

Do you remember Curtis Hillard? He first became interested in Jewish ministry his freshman year at Liberty University while studying Romans 9-11, and learning about God’s plan and promises for the nation of Israel. In the Summer of 2018, he visited Israel and saw the great need for the Jewish ministry God had already begun to lay on his heart. 

A few months later, he got connected with us in Lynchburg, to learn more about Jewish ministry and opportunities to get involved. I started mentoring Curtis in Jewish ministry and teaching him the little bit of Hebrew that I knew, and after he graduated in 2019, he served with Chosen People Ministries (CPM) in New York City through a 1-year internship. 

During that internship, Curtis got to work alongside seasoned missionaries, and he experienced firsthand various forms of ministry to different Jewish communities in New York. God especially burdened his heart for the Haredim – the ultra Orthodox Jewish communities – who are trapped in their legalism. Curtis saw “that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” (Romans 10:2)

One of the unfortunate downsides to being a missionary with CPM is that the Haredim avoid missionaries like the plague. It is extremely difficult for missionaries to develop good relationships with the Haredim and to reach them with the Gospel. Because of this, Curtis feels led by God to reach the Haredim by setting up an accounting business in their community, living life alongside them, developing relationships by serving them, and sharing the Gospel with them.

This is a great plan, but Curtis will be isolated and may find difficulty in persevering in ministry without the accountability and encouragement of a Jewish ministry. Because of this need, I plan to continue mentoring Curtis longterm to encourage him to persevere in the work that God has so clearly called him to do. He and I meet every other week to stay in touch and study Messianic prophecy together.

Please pray for Curtis:

• Perseverance and encouragement to walk the narrow path
• Intensive studies in Master’s program in accounting May 2021-August 2022
• Wisdom and clear direction for future ministry and Jewish studies
• That God would provide a godly wife for him who shares his heart for the Haredim

Please pray that God would raise up more laborers, like Curtis, into His harvest of Jewish ministry; for truly, “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”. (Matthew 9:37-38) 

Blessings in Messiah,

BJ, Carissa, and Ari

I’m not sure if you heard, but Carissa and I have some exciting new ministry projects we are working on this year! Carissa is leading a virtual Bible study with about 475 women! There are a few unbelievers (some of whom are Jewish) in the group, and they are hearing the Gospel in every class they listen to and how all the Biblical Holy Days in Leviticus 23 are fulfilled by Jesus. 

Last year, we began the development of Planet Zula – an Israeli Hosting Network. And this year, I was promoted to Technology Lead for this project! God willing, Planet Zula will multiply our original vision for Brazil a thousandfold! The plan is to recruit Christians all over the world to host Israelis in their homes and to share the Gospel with them through hospitality. I am currently overseeing the development of the mobile app, which will be similar to Airbnb for Israelis to find Christian hosts to stay with for free wherever they want to travel. Our goal is to launch Planet Zula in October of this year, but there is a ton of work to be done.

Critical to all of this ministry work is an endeavor Carissa and I are calling Project 500. Because we are not yet fully supported, I have been working side jobs to help pay the bills. It is crucial for us to raise our full funding so that I can quit my side jobs and spend an additional 500 hours this year to launch Planet Zula and each year after to reach Jewish people for Messiah. We want thousands more Israelis to hear the Gospel!

As we look into 2021, we need to raise up new donors to enable your ministry to continue. We have not been able to preach in churches or meet new people, so we are limited to contacting previous donors, those who pray for your ministry, and those who know us.

We need to raise an additional $2,000 in monthly support for Project 500. Would you please pray about whether the Lord would have you join our team with regular monthly support? Or if you are already giving, would you prayerfully consider an increase? That would tremendously bless Carissa and me, and enable us to multiply our impact in reaching Jewish people with the Gospel. (Romans 10:1)

If you would like to give online, you can click here, or you can call 212-223-2252 during NYC business hours.

Blessings in Messiah,

BJ, Carissa, and Ari

Since 2012, Carissa and I have dreamed about hosting Israelis in our home and sharing the Gospel with them over coffee or a home-cooked meal. God closed the door for us to do this in Brazil, but He just opened a huge opportunity for us to multiply this dream a thousandfold! And I’m not even exaggerating.

My co-workers at Chosen People Ministries and I are developing an Israeli hosting network with the goal to launch a pilot program this October! Our first year will be a small test group of about 50 hosts in the U.S., but ultimately we plan to recruit over 1,000 Christian hosts in the U.S. and many more all around the world to be a part of our network.

My role is the Technology Lead for the U.S. team working on this project, which means I am coordinating with the software developers for our app and website, and overseeing the tech side of the hosting network.

The app will be similar to Airbnb, but specifically for Israelis to find Christian hosts anywhere in the world to stay with for free. This will be huge! My prayer is that every single Israeli that leaves on a trip would stay with one or multiple hosts on our network and hear the Gospel repeatedly throughout their travels. Before COVID hit, roughly 60,000-70,000 Israelis traveled the world every year, but as I write this they are in lockdown and no one can leave Israel. We are trusting God to work everything out for our network to begin hosting Israelis this year.

Please pray with us:

• For the end of COVID and/or that the vaccine would be effective, so that Israelis will start to travel again this year.
• That the website and app would be completed, tested, and all the bugs worked out by the end of this summer.
• That God would raise up and equip the right 50 hosts to pilot this network.
• That the right Israelis would hear about this network, have wonderful experiences and conversations with our hosts, and tell all their friends to use our network.
• For me and the other leaders as we get this network up and running – there is so much work to be done.
• That God would use this network powerfully to reach Israelis with the Gospel, and that thousands would come to faith in Jesus as their Messiah.

Thank you for your continued prayer and support, we sure do appreciate you.

BJ, Carissa and Ari

The future of Messianic apologetics online has arrived!

www.chosenpeopleanswers.com

Our coworker, Brian Crawford, has been working relentlessly for over five years now on website and content development for Chosen People Answers. It is an innovative new way to investigate the identity of Yeshua (Jesus) online. Designed as the combination of a digital library and encyclopedia, there are dozens of articles on the site and more than 225 million words of Jewish and Christian texts. This site is especially for Jewish people of all backgrounds who have questions and objections about Yeshua being the Messiah of Israel. And it is also useful to train believers in Messianic apologetics. 

Chosen People Answers addresses subjects like:

• How Can Jesus Be Messiah If There’s No Peace on Earth?
• Does Belief in Jesus Result in Antisemitism?
• Are Science and Faith Compatible?
• Can I Be Jewish and Believe in Jesus?

These articles span from basic, 500-word articles, to academic, book-length series. The best part of Chosen People Answers is that every paragraph of every article and every verse and section is fully interactive: vote, like, dislike, agree, disagree, and participate with a community of others who are also interacting with the texts. This makes the experience come alive!

The site is available today in beta form, as it remains under construction. There will be bugs, and the beta is best experienced in a desktop or laptop browser, rather than on a mobile device. To request a code to create an account, please email [email protected].

Praise God that Brian was able to launch the beta at this time when many people are spending more time at home on their computers.

Please pray for Chosen People Answers in the following ways:

• That God would provide full funding for the Crawford family to continue this essential ministry, and funding for the completion of this project.
• That the website development could be finished quickly in order to reach Jewish unbelievers as soon as possible.
• That many Jewish people would find and engage in these texts, find answers to their questions and objections, and come to faith in Yeshua.
• That God would raise up more Messianic apologists like Brian to engage with users on this platform. 

Thank you for your continued prayer and support for our ministry so that we can continue to reach Jewish people with the Gospel alongside our amazing coworkers, like the Crawfords, in Chosen People Ministries.

BJ, Carissa and Ari

When I met Emily Crawford on the Outreach Brazil missions trip over winter break, I asked her where she learned about Chosen People Ministries (CPM). To my surprise, she responded, “At your house.”

This is a story of God’s sovereignty. 

Carissa and I work hard to mobilize Christian young adults into Jewish ministry and recruit them for CPM, but God is the one who makes it happen.

The crazy thing is, I don’t even remember meeting Emily before seeing her in Brazil. A few years ago, Emily took a trip to Israel where God gave her a heart for the Jewish people. Afterwards, she just so happened to find FIRM (Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries – whom we partner with in Israel) on Instagram and started following them. 

Emily lives in Tennessee, over 5 hours away from our house. In February of 2019, Emily just so happened to be visiting a friend at Liberty University; which just so happened to be during Global Focus Week; where Kayla, with FIRM, just so happened to be representing at a booth. FIRM just so happened to invite us to join their booth to represent CPM for the week, and we just so happened to host a Shabbat dinner at our house at the end of that week for all the students interested in learning more.

Kayla posted on Instagram about the Shabbat dinner, where Emily just so happened to see it. She showed her friend and they decided to come. That is the largest event we have hosted in our house with more than 55 students attending! That night, Emily heard me talk about CPM and different opportunities to get involved with us. She was so excited! This was an answer to her prayers. She went on CPM’s Outreach Israel that summer and Outreach Brazil the following winter.

Were all of these minor events just a coincidence? Absolutely not! They are a magnificent display of God’s sovereignty – working in all the details to guide Emily and equip her for Jewish ministry. She now plans to get a degree in Jewish studies and join CPM as a student missionary! Praise God! 

Please pray for God’s continued guidance in Emily’s life, and pray that God would send us more people like Emily to mobilize into Jewish ministry.

Thank you for your continued prayer and support for our ministry. Without you, we would not be able to impact the lives of Christian young adults like Emily.

Blessings in Messiah,

BJ, Carissa and Ari

Back in January I helped our coworkers Shmueli and Jenna lead Outreach Brazil – a missions trip in Rio reaching Israeli backpackers with Gospel. The trip was a huge success! 

My favorite part of the trip was joining 15 Israelis for a full day tour of Rio. Our team quickly befriended them and had great conversations about Jesus as we visited the Christ the Redeemer statue and other sights around the city! At the end of the tour, we invited all our new friends to join us for our Shabbat dinner. Half of them came and heard the Gospel again that night.

Altogether, we were able to have Gospel conversations with about 20 Israelis throughout the trip! One of my favorite conversations was with Yosef*, whom I met on the tour. 

As we were standing in line to see the statue of Jesus, Yosef asked me what I do for a living. I got to tell him about my mission to unite the Jewish and Christian communities, to help Christians overcome lies they’ve been taught about the Jewish people, to fight anti-Semitism in American churches, and to help Jewish people overcome lies they’ve been taught about Jesus, the Bible and God. 

He was amazed and intrigued by my job and asked many good questions. He was open to hearing about my faith in Jesus because he was so grateful for my part in fighting anti-Semitism and supporting Israel. Yosef did not come to salvation that day, but I consider my conversation with him a victory. 

I have heard it takes an average of six or seven times of hearing the Gospel before an unbeliever comes to faith in Jesus. Though they have heard of Jesus, most Israelis have never heard the Gospel! For most, it will take more than this first encounter with the truth about Jesus for them to understand and make a decision of faith.

Yosef is closer to believing in Jesus now than before I met him, and that is a huge success! Because, I am now friends with Yosef on Facebook, I will be able to continue this Gospel conversation with him in the months and years to come, and will be reminded to pray for his salvation every time I see his posts.

Please pray for the salvation of Yosef and all the other Israelis who heard the Gospel through Outreach Brazil.

Blessings in Messiah,

BJ, Carissa and Ari

*name changed

Did you know that Israel is unreached? I know it sounds absurd to label as “unreached” the nation to whom God revealed Himself, to whom all the scriptures were given, and to whom Messiah first came. It is absurd, but it is true.

According to the Joshua Project, the term “unreached” can be defined as a people group without enough indigenous Christians to evangelize the rest of that people group. Missiologists classify an unreached people group as being less than 2% Evangelical Christian.

Of the 6.7 million Jewish people living in Israel, only about 30,000 believe in Jesus as Messiah. That is less than half of one percent of the population! That means there are not enough Jewish believers in Israel to reach the rest of the nation. There is a great need for evangelism, but it is difficult to have Gospel conversations in Israel because of the cultural rejection of Jesus.

However, many Israelis travel outside of Israel for up to one year after their mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces. We have found that this is possibly the best opportunity to share the Gospel with Israelis. They are incredibly open and will often stay up past 3 in the morning talking with us about Jesus!

We met Tom while traveling in South America, where he heard the Gospel for the first time. Looking back on his travels, he said, “I learned cool stuff about Jesus the Messiah – facts that I as a Jewish person in Israel didn’t know before, and maybe also could not. I was traveling one year in South America, and Carissa and BJ and their beliefs and their thoughts, those things I will never forget.”

Up to 20,000 Israelis travel through South America every year! We are praying that God would raise up more laborers into this strategic field. God’s desire is for the Salvation of Israel (Romans 10:1), and He has given us, the Church, the responsibility to preach the Gospel to them (Romans 10:14).

Please pray Luke 10:2 with us: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

Thank you for your continued prayers and support, our ministry would be impossible without you.

Blessings in Messiah,

BJ, Carissa, and Ari

Do you ever wonder how we got started in Jewish ministry and ended up working with Chosen People Ministries (CPM)?

In November 2012, only four months after we got married, Carissa and I attended a Messianic retreat. There God burdened our hearts for the Jewish people and gave us a passion for Israeli backpackers, but we had no idea what to do next. Jewish ministry was completely foreign to us.

At the retreat, we made friends with Jewish believers from Chicago. They invited us for Shabbat dinners, so we started making the two-hour drive from Wisconsin every other week. That is where we first met Shmueli (Stephen Arnold), who told us his vision to start a guesthouse ministry in Brazil to reach Israeli backpackers. This was too perfect – I grew up in Brazil and we want to reach Israeli backpackers with the Gospel! We prayed about it and decided to partner with Shmueli.

As we were deciding which missions organization to join, CPM stood out to us for several reasons. We constantly met CPM missionaries at events, conferences, and congregations we attended. They were very friendly, doctrinally solid, and encouraging to us as we sought God’s direction.

Probably the deciding factor for us was that CPM is a very entrepreneurial organization. They leave it up to the missionary to decide where to go and what ministry to do – as long as it lines up with CPM’s mission statement. This is a great fit for us, because we have a specific passion and vision that others are not doing. 

Since joining CPM in 2014, we have been continually impressed with the leadership who have guided and mentored us, encouraged us in difficult times, and exhorted us to take care of family above ministry. We are inspired by the rich 125-year history of Chosen People Ministries and the incredible work they are doing in 18 countries around the world. We are excited to be a part of the vision going forward: to focus on reaching Israelis, to utilize digital evangelism, and to invest in a new generation of young adults to expand missions to the Jewish people.

We could not be happier with the organization we chose, and we are so grateful to have you partnering with us in the Gospel. Thank you for your continued prayers and support, our ministry would not be possible without you.

Blessings in Messiah and Happy New Year,

BJ, Carissa, and Ari

You have been praying for years that God would allow Carissa and me to reach Israeli backpackers in Brazil with the Gospel. As most of you know, because of Carissa’s health, we have not been able to move overseas. But God has bigger plans. When He closes a door, sometimes instead of opening a window, God opens a two-car-garage door.

Rather than moving us down to Brazil to help run one guesthouse, God has given us a new vision: to recruit and train more missionaries to run a network of Christian guesthouse ministries across all of South America to reach exponentially more Israeli backpackers with the Gospel than we would have been able to reach on our own.

In order to recruit Christain young adults to reach Israeli backpackers, I am working to set up and lead short term mission trips to backpack alongside Israelis and volunteer in already established Christian guesthouses in South America. Not only are these trips an effective way to share the Gospel with Israelis; they are also an opportunity for others to catch the vision for this ministry, and want to do it long term.

Outreach Brazil is a three-week trip, December 21st – January 8th, for Christians, ages 18-30, to share the Gospel with Israelis while exploring the beautiful sites in Rio de Janeiro. The team will hike with Israelis in the world’s largest urban rainforest, host backpacker Shabbat dinners, and have conversations about the Jewish Messiah at the foot of the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer.

As of the writing of this letter, I will be leading Outreach Brazil with our coworkers Robin, Shmueli, and Jenna. However, this is contingent on Carissa’s health remaining stable, and her ability to take care of Ari without me. While we are so thankful to report that our beautiful girl is overall healthy and growing well, she has had a number of challenges from severe colic to nursing trouble. Please pray that Ari quickly outgrows these challenges and is an easy baby for Carissa while I’m gone. As always, continue to pray for Carissa’s complete healing. Pray also for Outreach Brazil, that Israelis will be open and receptive to the Gospel, for team safety and unity, and that God will move some to continue this ministry long term.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support, we appreciate your partnership with us in the Gospel.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year,

BJ, Carissa, and Ari