Zachary & Micah Mariani
Cru (Campus Crusade For Christ) — Utica, MI, USA
My name is Zachary Mariani and I have been on staff with Cru for 8 years. My wonderful wife, Micah, has also been on staff for 8 years and together we have two beautiful children, Ellie and Ezra. For 6 out of the last 8 years we served internationally in the Middle East with the heart to reach some of the most unreached people groups in the 10/40 window. Initially, my wife and I both served on college campus teams and primarily focused on bringing the Gospel to as many young people and potential future leaders that we could. Over time we both transitioned roles, my wife switching to a Human Resources role within the national ministry to help bless the local staff with her administrative giftings and I shifted into church planting. Our desire was to help establish communities that loved Jesus, loved each other, and were willing to go elsewhere to build more communities that loved Jesus while also being a support system for them as they go.
When we first left for the Middle East after college and then returning after we were married, we had no intention of coming back to America. We really felt that our hearts and visions were firmly placed overseas and we were trusting the Lord and following Him boldly as we went. This past year was filled with many unforeseen circumstances that ultimately revealed to us that the Lord may be leading us back to America for a season. Now being located Stateside, I have had to find a new role since I cannot church plant in the Middle East remotely. Micah, on the other hand, has been able to maintain her role in the Middle East remotely and continues to directly serve with our staff overseas. With the desire to remain as intimately connected to international missions as possible, I accepted a role as an International Privacy Manager on one of our global teams. Our global teams in Cru serve all of our ministries all across the world, with ministries located in 190 different countries. My role as a Privacy Manager is to make sure that our ministries are operating in legal ways in all of the countries that we are present in so that our ministries can continue, as well as helping bolster our ministries by training them on data privacy along with our global security team to ensure greater longevity on the field. With advancing technologies and increasingly hostile governments toward the Gospel, investing in this realm of support to protect our staff and keep them on the mission field was where I felt the Lord leading me for the time being.
While living in the metro Detroit area, one of the unique opportunities that exists is frequent interaction with Middle Easterners as this part of the countries statistically has the highest concentration of Arabs in the United States. While here, we are engaging with our neighbors and the community around us as many of them have backgrounds similar to where we served the last several years. We are also connected with and helping a local church planter who hopes to plant locally within the next year. Though we do not necessarily plan to be elders of this new church, as supported missionaries ourselves we are hoping to dedicate a lot of our free time to serving with this church. We intend on helping engage the community, particularly the Middle Eastern population, helping lead worship services, and even helping with some of the administrative bookkeeping.
In the wake of an unexpected return to America after many years serving in the Middle East, we are viewing this season as one of recovery and healing, reconnection with the Lord, and a time of vision renewal. We are desiring to fully invest in the local community around us while we are Stateside and develop new skills that may enable us to serve once again overseas in a more sustainable and long-term capacity. Though we don’t know what the future will bring or where we will be called to go, we are taking this transition day-by-day and placing our faith and hope in Christ as He leads us. Wherever we may be, there are those who have yet to know Christ and experience His love. We trust that He has ordained us to be where we are in each season to minister to those around us.