Karis is a 21-year-old MK from Papua New Guinea, and just graduated from Ethnos 360 Bible Institute last year. Through studying Romans she caught a glimpse of God’s heart for the Jewish people and prayed that He would use her to minister to them. At the same time she was also praying that He would open up a door for her to serve overseas. That week, BJ and Carissa came and spoke at her school sharing about an opportunity to minister to Israeli Backpackers in New Zealand! God opened every door possible for Karis to serve at the Zula Lodge in New Zealand for 3 months. She says, “BJ and Carissa patiently walked me through the whole process, teaching, guiding, supporting, and encouraging me.”

Wes grew up in Virginia with an interest in Russian language and culture. He is 20 years old and currently studying International Business at Liberty University. After hearing a speaker at Liberty give a talk on Judaism, Wes felt God telling him to learn more. He went and talked with the speaker who connected him with BJ and Carissa and their ministry.

Wes says, “From experiencing Jewish traditions with the Kerstetters and seeing how they have sacrificed so much for what God has called them to do, I was inspired to follow God’s calling to Jewish Ministry.” This summer he took an internship with Chosen People Ministries in New York, where he had many opportunities to be involved in reaching the Russian Jewish community with the Gospel! This semester Wes will study in Moscow, Russia to continue his language and culture acquisition. Please pray that God would give him peace, godly friends, opportunities to be a testimony for Jesus during his time in Russia, and wisdom and guidance for his future.

R.A. came up to me with guns blazing! The conversation started out SUPER rough – he was aggressively attacking my beliefs in God and creation, and bashing me for not being open to the “scientific evidence of evolution”. R.A. was an intriguing secular Jewish man in his 50s.

He admitted that he does wrong things and believes in an eternity, but kept dodging my questions about God, and wanted to argue about minor issues like the flood, evolution, aliens, and dreams. I finally asked him if he felt close to God or distant from God. That made him pause and think, “Wow, that is a good question. I’ve never thought about that before.” I told him that according to Isaiah 59:2, our sin separates us from God. And this is important because the choices we make and how we live this life will determine our eternity: if we are close to God and have a right relationship with Him now, we will be with Him for eternity, but if we are separated from God now, we will be separated for eternity. He replied, “That’s a good point, I never thought about it that way. So how do I get close to God?”

HALLELUJAH! What an important question. “How do I get close to God?”

I told him that’s what Isaiah 53 is about: God provided a way for us to be close to him through the atonement of Messiah. I had him read the passage from Isaiah for himself and asked him who he thought it was talking about. He immediately said, “Jesus?” I told him I believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Immediately, his countenance changed from interest to anger, he ended the conversation, and walked off. But he took the tract with him as well as his conviction of sin and separation from God, his need for restoration, and knowledge that Messiah Jesus is the way of salvation. Please pray for R.A.

As you have prayed and walked with us in this unexpected, bittersweet season, God has been overwhelming us with blessings! Not all of the blessings are the ones we have asked for or the way we have imagined them, but they are bountiful and beautiful and oh-so-graciously bestowed from the hand of God.

Though we don’t know how long we will be in Lynchburg, Virginia, God has gifted us with a beautiful home to call our own. Maybe it will only be “home” for a short time, but it is a beautiful place to grow our family and ministry for as long as He has us here. To honor and dedicate this home to serve the Lord and blessing of others, we have named our little house Beit Chesed, meaning house of lovingkindness. Because God has poured out his grace on us and promised grace and loving kindness to his people, Israel forever. And wherever we are, in the United States, Israel or Brazil, we will be praising His name and pouring out His love and blessing on Israel. (Jeremiah 31:3-‬4)

Over the past couple months in Beit Chesed, we have hosted several successful ministry events proclaiming God’s love for Israel, the work He is doing in Jewish ministry around the world, and how others can be a part of it. One of these events was a hummus night attended by about twenty Liberty students. During this event, we highlighted a short term trip called Shalom Brooklyn. Shalom Brooklyn is an week long outreach in July focused on proclaiming the gospel to the Jewish people of New York. Over the course of the week, the team will receive training from experienced Chosen People missionary staff, share the Gospel through street evangelism and outreach events, engage in follow-up with those they meet, and much more! Praise God, because of our hummus night presentation, several Liberty students plan to join me, BJ, this summer for Shalom Brooklyn! If you are interested in practical ways to learn and be more involved in Jewish evangelism, this may be a great trip for you, too.

Through these events and other forums, it has been our privilege to present Jewish ministry to hundreds of students. Please pray that God continues to grow the seeds that were planted and add many workers to the field of Jewish ministry.

You might be wondering what buying a house means for our plan to start the ministry in Brazil.  We are still prayerfully working towards being a part of the ministry in Brazil, but we honestly don’t know what God has in mind. With Carissa’s current health condition, moving to Brazil seems impossible right now, but it’s clear that God has not closed that door yet. We look forward to sharing more details with you in an upcoming letter. As always, we are so grateful for your prayers and your support of God’s work through us wherever we go.

B’shalom Yeshua,

BJ and Carissa Kerstetter

“If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) Carissa and I saw this verse come to life back in February at Liberty University’s missions conference, Global Focus Week (GFW). Last year, I emailed the person in charge of getting a table to represent Chosen People Ministries at GFW. No response. I tried again and asked a couple other contacts at Liberty about it. Still no success. As the time of the conference drew near, I was discouraged, and realizing it was an extremely busy time for us, I decided to let it go and try again for the following semester. Weeks went by and I had forgotten about it. The afternoon before the GFW began, we got a phone call from the director of FIRM (Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries) informing us they had a table at the conference, but their representative from Texas became extremely ill and was not able to make it to Lynchburg.

Of more than forty groups representing ministries across the globe, two organizations representing Israel and Jewish ministry tried to get in to GFW, and Satan tried to prevent them both. But he didn’t stand a chance, because God had a plan! We were asked to fill in for FIRM’s representative, and given the opportunity to also represent Chosen People Ministries, because the two organizations have a strong partnership! Obviously, we cleared our schedules and accepted this tremendous privilege to represent both organizations at the world’s largest Christian university. God gently reminded me that His plans are better than my plans (Isaiah 55:8-9). He knows what He’s doing and I can always trust Him.

GFW at Liberty was unbelievably successful and encouraging. We had individual conversations with over one hundred students who stopped by our table. We got to share with them about God’s heart for the Jewish people, the amazing works He is doing in Israel, and how they can be a part of it. We were invited by the leaders of a dorm to give a presentation about our ministries. Coming from a small Bible school, I was imagining maybe 20-30 students in a dorm hall – over 100 students voluntarily showed up and eagerly listened to our presentation!

We thank God for this incredible opportunity and the positive responses we have received from the students. Please pray with us that God would continue to stir in the hearts of these students His heart for Israel and the desperate need for more workers in Jewish ministry. Pray that we can have an effective impact on their lives and mobilize some into short-term or even full-time Jewish ministry.

We are so excited to tell you about the tremendous ways in which God has provided for this ministry! In September, we were at about $2,000 in monthly support, and in the past few months we have worked hard on fundraising. Praise God and thanks to each person who said “Yes!” to joining God’s work in Jewish ministry, we are now at $3,600 in committed monthly donations! We are on track with the financial goals that our leadership requires. Our next goal is to reach $4,800 by this summer. Thank you for your continued prayer for God’s provision.

We are finalizing paperwork for the adoption home study. After we are approved we will actively begin the process of domestic infant adoption. The agency we are working with averages 120 days to match clients with an expecting mother. Lord willing, we could be parents within the year, but we know that the wait can be much longer, and we trust God’s perfect timing!

We are excited about all that God is doing and wants us to do here in Lynchburg, Virginia. We have been hosting monthly Shabbat dinners – celebrating the Sabbath with Jewish believers, educating Gentile believers in Jewish culture and ministry, and reaching out to unbelieving Jewish community. These events have been successful and continue to grow larger every month. In addition to these events, we have been mentoring several younger believers, and have been blessed by this opportunity to pour into their lives. We have been approved for Liberty University’s Christian Service program, which means that we can recruit up to 15 Liberty students to work with us on various ministry projects which fulfill their 20 hours of required Christian service every semester. We hope to begin this in the fall. We also desire to begin a Bible study outreach for local Jewish unbelievers, and a basic Jewish evangelism class for believers. Before we can begin these new projects, we must finish fundraising. We are also praying for God to provide a space big enough to host groups of forty or more people, as our events continue to grow larger.

As we continue to learn how to manage Carissa’s new health condition, we plan to take a short trip to Rio de Janeiro to see how she handles living there, find a doctor and hospital that suit her medical needs, and find safe food sources. If all goes well, we will continue with plans to move to Brazil and begin our ministry to Israeli backpackers, in the next couple years. Meanwhile, we are so thankful for all God is doing in and through us in this unexpected season. Thank you for being an integral part of all of it.

B’shalom Yeshua,
BJ and Carissa

Last summer when Carissa’s health took a dive for the worse and we were beginning to question the wisdom of moving overseas in the midst of so many challenges, she asked me a thought-provoking hypothetical question: If God led us to minister in the U.S. for a time, what might that ministry look like? If we weren’t in a place that we could run a guesthouse for Israeli backpackers, what would we be doing? Right away, I answered her, “Mobilization.”

Since before our journey into Jewish ministry took off, our heart has been to work with young adults – whether through evangelism, discipleship, mentoring, or mobilization. But it wasn’t until a couple months later, after we decided to move to Lynchburg, that we realized the huge potential to do all these things at Liberty University.

Since landing in Lynchburg, we have been thrilled to host several ministry events through which we have connected with over sixty young adults and have continued to regularly connect and build deeper relationships with around twenty four of them. In December, because of the generosity of our financial partners, we had the privilege of sponsoring and hosting a Hanukkah party on campus with the Stand with Israel club. About fifty five people attended, experienced fun and deeper spiritual aspects of Jewish culture, and learned about God’s heart for the Jewish people and the work of Chosen People Ministries. We also connected with several students who have an interest in pursuing Jewish ministry. We are looking into starting a new program for Liberty students to fulfill their Christian Service hours through service to the local Jewish community. We would especially appreciate your prayer for direction and success as we explore specific service opportunities for this program.

This year we plan to continue regular outreach events for both Jewish and Gentile believers and Jewish unbelievers, personally mentor several younger believers, and finish raising financial support to fund our ministry. To be honest, we are struggling to be patient through the process of support raising, as it is time consuming and therefore limits the time we can invest in other ministry. Please pray that we will reach our support goals early this year so that we will be free to focus on other aspects of our ministry.

Thank you for your prayer for us and this important work. We appreciate you and are excited to continue partnering with you in this ministry throughout 2018.

B’shalom Yeshua,
BJ and Carissa Kerstetter

Happy New Year dear friend!

We hope you had a wonderful holiday season. We are praying that this year will bring you many blessings and be a time of great growth for you in the knowledge and strength of God, that you may more fully know His love for you and experience the victory and truest joy of abiding in Him.

Your prayer and support were put to good work in November and December through several outreach events, including co-sponsoring a Hanukkah event with the Stand With Israel Club at Liberty University. Through these events we were able to build connections into both believing and unbelieving Jewish communities, establish relationships with Liberty students and community members who are interested in Jewish ministry, and educate them about Jewish culture and specific opportunities within Chosen People Ministries. It was an encouraging end of a year filled with many ups and downs.

We are now eager to plunge into all that God has for the year ahead – which brings me to a bit of news we have to share with you. BJ and I have traveled the world together and shared many adventures with you. But we have recently embarked on our greatest adventure yet: growing our family through Domestic Infant Adoption!

The choice of adoption to grow our family has been a dream on our hearts and in our prayers for the last several years. Early last year we decided that we’re ready to bring this dream to life, and our unexpected detour to Virginia made it possible to begin even sooner than we had anticipated.

Regardless of our desire or ability to have biological children, we choose adoption because we believe in the beauty of bringing a child who is in need of a loving family into a family with an abundance of love to give. This decision is not born out of infertility but out of love and our conviction to follow God’s calling to care for the widow and orphan (James 1:27). We have no doubt that we are blessed with the most wonderfully accepting and loving support system in you, and all of our amazing friends and family.

Will you please be praying with us as we ask God to bring us exactly the child that He intends for us to love? We don’t know yet what each step of this process will look like for us, but we know it will be in God’s perfect timing, and guided by His wisdom and love. We will keep you updated as we have news to share about this process.

B’Shalom Yeshua,

BJ and Carissa (and Harley)

“Your ministry is comendo pelas beiradas,” he said; and then explained, ”This is a Brazilian idiom that means eating around the edges where no one else is eating. I’m very excited about your ministry because it is greatly needed and no one else is doing it.” This is what a church planter and missionary mobilizer in Rio told Stephen and me after we explained to him our vision to reach Israeli backpackers in Rio.

Even if Carissa and I are not be able to move to Brazil next year as planned, we still desire to be as much a part of reaching Israeli backpackers in Rio as possible. For that reason, I joined our teammate, Stephen Arnold, on a trip to Rio back in September to make preparations for the launching of this incredible ministry!

Our short ten days in Rio were such a blessing and encouragement. Almost every Brazilian we spoke with in the local churches has a Jewish friend, neighbor, or co-worker. Many of these believers strongly desire to share the Gospel with their Jewish friends, but don’t know how to begin presenting Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Some of them even asked us to train them to do this effectively.

We shared our ministry vision with several pastors in the Southern Zone of Rio, where we plan to establish our guesthouse. Each pastor was not only excited to hear our plan, but also eager to be a part of reaching Israelis with the Gospel, and each offered to help us in any way they could. After sharing our ministry vision in one of those churches, several young Brazilians, who speak English very well, came to us and expressed a desire to volunteer at the guesthouse. The pastor of that church wants to connect us with the five largest churches in Rio so that we can train their members in Jewish evangelism and train their youth to volunteer at our guesthouse.

It is clear that God led us to churches in whom He has cultivated a great understanding of His heart for Israel and the Jewish people. God continues to guide and direct us, open doors we never thought to knock on, and connect us with key contacts to accomplish all that needs to be done. This trip was another confirmation that God is not only in this ministry, but that it belongs to Him and it is He who drives it. What a blessing and honor it is that He has chosen to use these Brazilian churches, you – our sending team, and us to accomplish His redemptive plan for Israel.

“The difference between you and me is that you have answers and I do not,” he said. And I wondered if he felt as hopeless as he sounded. It was well after midnight and Carissa, our teammate Niko, our new Israeli friend, Yosef, and I were talking about the questions of life. Who is God? Why does He allow pain? Why is there so much hate and evil in the world? And on everything we had agreed… except on the issue of the messiahship of Yeshua.

But his primary argument was not what you might think. Yosef’s biggest objection to Christianity is how many Christians have killed and persecuted Jewish people throughout the centuries, and even in modern times, in the name of Jesus. “They said they represent Jesus and you say you represent Jesus,” Yosef asked, “how do I know which of you is right?” Sobered by the harsh reality of his words, there was really only one way we could respond. So, Carissa gave him a New Testament in Hebrew and challenged him to read the book of John to find out for himself who Jesus is and what He is really like, and decide for himself which representation of Jesus is true. It’s such a good thing, isn’t it, that the truth about Jesus doesn’t depend on how well we, as Christians, represent him?

This conversation, and many others during our winter outreach, fueled our desire to spend this summer in Israel to continue these friendships and conversations, and equip ourselves to have many more in the future. And after years of dreaming and praying, the day is finally almost here! We fly into Tel Aviv on May 29^th and will spend our first two and a half weeks based in Jerusalem with our wonderful coworker and leader Robin, and a team of other young adults, doing service projects, outreach and touring.

Halfway through June, we will depart from the team and go back to Tel Aviv where we will start an intensive course in Modern Hebrew at Tel Aviv University. We’re so excited to continue this incredible journey of learning culture and language and can’t wait to start reconnecting with the friends we made during our winter outreach in South America.

Please continue praying for our time here – productivity, health (enough sleep!), safety, wisdom, evangelism, and for our personal spiritual lives and our relationship, as we will be in separate rooms and closely sharing space with a team for the first weeks and spending very full and active days with little down time throughout the trip. As always, please pray against spiritual warfare for us and for the team and for our days and steps to be directed by the Lord!

We are so blessed by your continued partnership with this work and look forward to sending our love and updates to you from the Land!