Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope your day had joy and peace in Christ to guide it. I had a good day on campus by the day’s end when two African American students, Anthony and Laila, each prayed with me to receive Jesus. Please pray they are blessed. Anthony took a real step of faith. Juan was close to the kingdom, a soccer goalie at school wearing a Yankees cap in the PE lounge. Classic good-looking Latino guy with a short hair cut, businessman features. He felt he needed to think about a commitment to Christ.  Anthony and Laila’s stories are below if you have some time.

 Anthony is about 6’5″. He was wearing shorts and white socks and grey Crocs with a light gray hoodie. He had a round face (I saw as he walked away) and kind of a pug nose. His Afro was about 5 inches high pushing out of his hood. He was sitting under the stairs near the doors of the SRC building. When I asked him what he would say to God to get into Heaven he said, “I feel like I can’t really tell God. He should know. He sees all the bad people do. So someone could lie even though He sees everything but it would be a trap.” “Like a trick question?” I put in. He agreed. “The thought of Heaven is scary though—you die, where you go after.” I asked him the likelihood he would go to Heaven and he similarly said, “I hope, I can’t really say.” I went through the Gospel with him and the righteousness of God and asked him if he would want to be forgiven for his sins or thought something else. “The easy answer is ‘Be forgiven for my sins’. I believe in God, not the God that is taught.” He went on to say there were so many different likes of Bibles, (he meant translations I think). I agreed there were certainly more than 40, but they were like a teacher in a class having everyone put a sentence in their own words. They would be a little different but they would mean the same thing. There are not translations of the Bible that say Jesus is not God, did not die for your sins and rose again from the dead. None of the translations change doctrines. I said the Greek and Hebrew scholars have nailed down what the translations came from and you can get a Bible that is simply trying to be as close to the original as you can get in English.  (Cult translators btw might change a verse or two. But there are so many ways Jesus claims to be God and even Old testament passages saying the Messiah is God. They change a couple a bit, to try to get around Jesus deity, but miss the majority.] That really seemed to settle something for him, explaining something he had not understood. And he said, “You really changed my perspective.” I talked to him about the prophecy in the Bible, saying Isaiah 53 said Jesus would die between two evil guys and be buried in a rich man’s tomb. I said the Bible has many prophecies in it that are fulfilled in Jesus. The Gita of the Hindu faith and the Quran don’t ever predict the future. That is how you know God wrote the Bible. Other people wrote those books. Only God knows the future. I explained how Christ could live inside him, giving him the power to live the Christian life, and he would be forgiven. So I talked him through the prayer expecting to just say you could think about this and pray it later. But instead I offered it to him in that moment, asking if that is what he would want. I asked him if he would want to take a step of faith and ask God to continue to help him understand. He said the prayer was like what he had heard in a friends Bible study he had attended. (I imagine those people were praying for him.) He hesitated and I said I do not want to pressure you at all and he said it was weird praying, talking to someone you cannot see. I agreed, but then he prayed to receive Christ and seemed happy. I explained living by the Holy Spirit’s Power. I gave him a copy of The Case for Christianity Answer Booklet and providentially turned right to the chapter that was titled, “With all the differences between the New Testament manuscripts how can we trust the Bible?” I said that was kind of what he was asking. I gave him a copy of the Bible Study on the Deity of Christ which begins with Isaiah 9:6 and explained how the Old Testament taught the Messiah would be God. I also gave him the book Bible Promises for You encouraging him to read the Bible. I wrote his name and the date, “By the Spirit’s Power” (explaining he could ask for more faith or anything he needed from the Lord) and “forgiven!” on the inside and he liked that and thanked me. I said he could text me any question he had or email me and I gave him my number. He seemed happy about that. I told him I would pray for him every day for a year. “That’s hard to believe,” he said. I said it might be, but I make a list of people who pray with me and pray for them every day and it is a habit now. He accepted that and had to run for his ride. He flashed me a smile as his mask came off so I could picture him when I prayed for him.

Laila was sitting at a counter height table as I began to walk out past the bookstore. She said she’d do a survey. I was so tired at that point I was almost disappointed, having gone through the Gospel with quite a few students today.  She had a cute small face and did not seem very big over all, ran track at school. She had a hoodie on with some Anime characters on it and a ball cap with a long thick braid coming down out the back of her black baseball cap. She wore a black mask that she pulled up as we began to talk. So I got her name and began. I asked her what she would say to God to get into Heaven and she said, “So I can see my Grandma before He sends me down,” and she laughed. She thought she had more than a 50% chance of going to Heaven, that she thought would get more likely as she got older and got more done. She seemed to be listening attentively to the Gospel. Her pretty eyes seemed concentrated, but I wasn’t sure at all how receptive she was to the verses. When I finished I asked her if she thought she would want to be forgiven for her sins or thought something else. “I get a lot of people coming up and talking to me about this kind of stuff and this seemed accurate. The rest seemed like a load of bull.” I mentioned the Holy Spirit’s power to help her if He lived inside her and then said if she wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer she could pray and I walked her through it. I asked her if it was something she believed and wanted to pray. She nodded and took the booklet and prayed to receive Christ. I told her then she could keep the booklet and said it had more about faith in it and explained living “Inside out” where first God transformed you and then you did good things. She said she liked to read, so I gave her the Bible Study on the deity of Jesus, how He claims to be God. I also gave her 20 Things Go Can’t Do explaining how anything the book said she needed to do, God would give her the power to do by the Holy Spirit in her. I wrote her name and the date and “forgiven” on the inside. She seemed grateful and I said, “Thanks so much for talking with me and praying with me. It’s so kind of you.” “You’re welcome,” she said cheerfully. “Have a good one,” I said walking away. ‘’You too,” she replied and I headed out to the truck.

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