Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope you are doing great and life in the Lord is sweet. I had a good day on campus. Maria prayed to receive Jesus Thursday and I went through the Gospel with a guy Abdul a guy from a Muslim family who took a copy of the Gospel with him and a pamphlet, “Jesus and the Quran”.

Maria was sitting in one of the cubbies that look down out over the lounge in the Science building. She had straight brown hair past her shoulders; she has a pretty Latina face, was petite and was wearing a tan coat with a broad collar and a double breasted front. She wore jeans and white Converse All-stars. She wasn’t sure she had much time, 10 minutes she thought, (or maybe wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to me for long) so I said she could just answer the couple main questions and she said OK. When I asked her what she would say to God if He asked why He should let her into Heaven she said, “Because I’ve done nice things on Earth I’ve helped many people in different ways.” She said she went to Catholic Church each week. When I asked what God had done to take away her sins she kind of guessed Baptism so I said that took away her original sin. (As an aside here: This is according to St. Augustine, but I am not an Augustinian I am a Baptist. I don’t believe that the Scripture teaches original sin but just a propensity toward sin [sin nature] so we do not have Adam’s guilt. So for the purposes of a Romanianist belief about the condition of infants it is usually too complicated to get into in contact evangelism. This is the Baptist Position if you wish to look at it http://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_lumpkins/2013/09/baptist-confession-of-1679-all-little-children-dying-in-infancy-saved-by-the-grace-of-god.html  I went on to talk about the sins that you commit that God takes away so I said, “This is how it works,” And I began to teach her the Gospel, the imputed righteousness of Christ. I told her that though we should do good things to please God or we would be hypocrites, our good things can’t fix our bad things. But Jesus had to die so we would not have to in Hell. She had thought she had a 50/50 chance of going to Heaven. She listened and took it all in and so I suggested as an adult she needed to say to God where she landed, if she trusted in Christ to save her. She said she wanted to be forgiven so I talked her through a prayer and asked if that expressed the desire of her heart. “Umhum,” she replied so I suggested she could pray that prayer and God could forgive her because she was trusting in Jesus. She prayed silently then and I explained living “inside out” writing “by the Spirit’s power” in the front of 20 Things God Can’t Do and since she did not have a Bible I gave her one showing her the “Where to Turn” section to help her and wrote her name, the date and “forgiven” in the front. I explained that if she was trusting in the Righteousness of Jesus to be her righteousness the likelihood she would go to Heaven was not 100%. I gave her a Bible study on “Doubt” and said I would keep her in my prayers. She thanked me and I headed out to a chiropractors appointment to try to get rid of some of the tension in my neck causing my headaches.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism Thursday if you had a chance, God truly blessed. Today we are meeting a student for a late lunch and then I am going overnight on a camp out with 3 of our godchildren, upon which it will be my privilege to freeze. Please pray it remains warmer than expected tonight.

Love ya,

Bob