Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed and you felt the nearness of the Lord. Yesterday seemed kind of taxing, I was a bit sick a dizzy frankly, came home and had a big headache latter.  I did go through a ton of apologetic stuff with Aziz a Muslim. He had no answers and kind of clandestinely took the Gospel with him that I had used to show him one verse slipping it into his folder from where I had set in on the table. So that was cool. Otherwise it was kind of rough day.

Today I had a good day on campus encouraging some Christians and got a couple good seeds planted and it turned out. Karen prayed with me to receive Jesus but I did not know it at first because it happened after I left her. Also 3 of the students who have prayed with me to receive Jesus this semester were at the Bible study tonight, Hope, John and Rebeca so that was great.

Karen was sitting in the ground floor of the Science buildings in the SW corner lounge at a table studying. She was up for going through some questions with me. Her hair has mostly light brown highlights and she had a wide gap-toothed sweet smile, wider face. She was Latina and at COD in the Nursing program though she lived closer to Tinley Park south of us. She was wearing a blouse and jeans. She was friendly (though she described herself as hard headed) and when I asked her what she would say to God if He asked, “Why should I let you into Heaven?” she said. “Overall I try to do good where I can, try to follow His word as close as I can.” When I asked her the likelihood she would get into Heaven she said, “I don’t know, that’s a good question.” So she did not seem to know or be trusting in her salvation through Christ. So I went through the Gospel with her and she knew Jesus had died for her sins. She listened carefully and I explained that unlike what she had said she needed to be saved by faith in Christ and that His righteousness was a gift to her by faith. She realized all this so I asked her she wanted to be forgiven for her sins trusting in Jesus or thought something else and she said to be forgiven and insisted that she had been in the church her entire life and believed the Gospel already. She was adamant about it so I said, “OK. Well, maybe I just caught you off guard with the question. So this booklet is a way you can share your faith if you had a friend in the Hospital of something and they were afraid they might die, like if they had to be unconscious for a procedure. Then you could show them the verses and lead them to Christ and if they wanted to be forgiven there is a prayer they can pray.” I talked through the prayer and said, “It says here, ‘Is this prayer the desire of your heart?’ So if it was you could have them pray that and then take them to Church maybe.” She liked that idea. So I explained living “inside out” where we ask God to transform us on the inside and they we become good people who do good things on the outside. I gave her a Bible study on the Deity of Christ and she thanked me. Then I said, “So now if I ask you why should God let you into Heaven you’d say?” “Because Jesus died for me.” she replied. “Good girl,” I said affirmingly and she smiled. I got up to go and said maybe I would see her around. Then I talked with a girl just across the lounge, I know, whose name I can never remember, who I always bump into at school. She is a Christian and showed me a book for a class she was taking at Church on mission work and we chatted for a bit. We were only 6 steps away from where Karen was still sitting at another table. I encouraged her and talked about the Holy Spirit guiding her life a bit and left for the truck to head home. I was shot and had to write part of the Bible study yet on Eschatology and never glanced back at Karen. Then tonight, David, the president of our little group on campus mentioned this anonymous girl and neither of us could remember her name, but she’d been sitting near the table before Bible Study the other night. He said, “Yeah, I ran into her and she said a girl prayed to receive Jesus you went through the Gospel with after you left.” “What was her name?” I asked David. “She said her name was Karen” he replied. So I high fived him and said, “Cool.” So I think my nameless friend encouraged Karen a bit after I left, or herd her pray and she decided she had not been trusting in Jesus and now she has! So pretty Great. I wonder how often that has happened before. It is pretty common a student will give the “works saves me” response and then claims to be trusting in Jesus. It must happen at least a dozen times every year. But this time my Christian friend was there to discover it and God found a way to let me know. It actually happened with another guy, Gerardo, earlier in the day. I hope he genuinely trusted Christ too.

So Thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had chance, God blessed the Work.

In Him,

Bob