Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope you day was blessed and you are warmed and filled with the Spirit. Jessica prayed to receive Jesus today. But our Bible study was cancelled the second week in a row due to weather, as the school closed at 5 PM to extra activities. I had a good day on campus. James took the student edition of The Case for Fatih saying he was an agnostic but would read it. He had grown up in the foster care system and had too many views of religion to pick one, but thought there was something out there. He was grateful for the nudge it seemed. Looked like a regular guy, short mop of hair and a hoodie. Michele, a lovely, tiny girl with long brown hair pulled up randomly on top of her head and the occasional freckle, took the student edition of The Case for Christ, having been burned by the Roman Catholic Church after serving there 3 days a week. She was unsure what to believe after hearing the Gospel, but was grateful for a book. I gave her the Compass church website, saying they were doing some presentations she might like to listen to online.

Before discovering Jessica, I had just talked to another Roman Catholic girl, Emily, who was consecrated to Mary. She wanted to know what I thought about Mary and a lot of other things, asking questions for about 40 minutes after I went through the Gospel with her. Essentially, I had asked her why she thought Mary, who was just a woman, would be able to hear more than one prayer at a time. She had no answer to that. I said Mary was awesome but she sinned. Emily asked why I said that, and I said in her song in Luke she says it in her description of herself. We looked it up in a Bible and I showed her where Mary calls God her Savior. I said that if Mary thought she needed a savior, the only thing she could need saving from was her sin. So by calling God her Savior, she thought she was a sinner. This went on and on in different doctrines of the Church from Augustine and elsewhere, all of which were extra biblical. So I just explained them to her in that light. Then I met Jessica as I went down the stairs.

Jessica was sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the PE building lounge waiting for her mom, who providentially was late. She was up for talking since she was just waiting by the doors. Each time the automatic doors opened we got a shot of cold air through the wide gap to the outside where it was about 10 degrees and blowing. She was wearing jeans and a jacket, had long brown hair pulled back behind her head and lots of freckles. She had a kind face and was very nice. Her father did worship at several Catholic churches, so she bounced around to them, following him as he got a job at the next one. When I asked her what she would say to God as to why He should let her into Heaven she said, “Because I believe in Him and I’ve never not believed in Him. I’ve always known He’s there for me. He’s not gonna let me down now.” She was sure she would go to Heaven. I began to go through the Gospel with her and she knew with some prompting that Jesus had died to take away her sins. I explained His imputed righteousness and how His blood had cleansed us and made us alive inside. She enjoyed hearing the Gospel. In the end she said she would want to be forgiven for her sins. I asked if she had been trusting in Jesus or had just known the story. She talked about how God was with her through everything and she had always trusted in that. So to help her clarify the question I asked her if, when she asked for forgiveness, if she was thinking about that Jesus had died for her and trusting in that, or if she knew that but had not thought about it before.  “I think that I really had never thought about it. It is just the way things were in our family.” “Like setting the table or celebrating Christmas?” I asked. She agreed it was like that. So I said if she would like to trust in what Jesus had done to forgive her, there was a prayer she could pray. I talked her thought it, asking if it was the desire of her heart. “”Yeah it is,” she said warmly smiling. So I said she could pray it quietly, not so I heard her, but God would hear and she prayed to receive Jesus. Her mom called but she said she was fine waiting, “I will talk to you when you get here. I am talking with someone right now,” she said on the phone and got off to hear more about living the Christian life.  I gave her the book 20 Things God Can’t Do and wrote her name and the date and “forgiven” in the front.  I showed her the 100 verses in the back and said the guy that wrote the book had found the translations styles he liked best to express the verses and she was excited about that. She said she had two bibles, a regular bible and a children’s bible she looked thing up in when she found something hard to understand. I gave her a Bible study and got her email to send her more stuff.  I told her I would keep her in my prayers until a year from spring and ask God to bless her. She reached out her hand to shake mine as I got up to go saying, “Thanks so much for sharing this with me.” I said she was welcome and headed off happily.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance. God truly blessed the work.

In Him,

Bob