Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope ya had a great day marching with the righteous. I had a good day on campus and Gianna prayed with me to receive Christ and I had an impromptu Bible Study with 3 guys from another Christian group on campus, I have gotten to know them, it went on for an hour. So I felt useful to the Lord. Gianna’s story is below if you have time, please pray she grows in her faith.

I ended up over at the Health and Science building early on, I usually go down to the first floor but I felt like I was supposed to stay on the second and crossed over the lounge bridge and bumped into Gianna sitting on a padded bench with table connected to the same on the other side. She said her name was Italian. She had light brown hair, pulled back in a pony tail, not as dark as the stereo type, it was parted perfectly down the middle, tight and flat on her head. She wore clear plastic glasses, over a pretty face and long bent eyelashes that seemed too symmetrical to be sourced in the gene pool. She had on pale blue jeans that were randomly shredded thigh to ankle and a black hoodie. A few days back she was walking with some black girls and had said something about some boy “giving her some $#!+”. I made some dumb joke, but somehow got the timing right, about a gift like that, what was he thinking you’re a gardener and you need fertilizer and I went on about cows or something and how she should lose the guy. It was so random coming up behind them the black girls completely cracked up and she laughed too, you had to be there I guess. So today my sarcasm from the day before seemed inspired. I asked her if she wanted to do a student survey. She said she would and then said, “I’ve seen you around you gave me some good advice once so I thought I would pay back the favor.” “Ok cool,” I said and got her name and three words to describe herself. Then I asked, “What advice did I give you?” “Something about gardening she said, I don’t remember exactly but it was good,” she replied. “Oh yeah you were walking with those girls over by the doors at the cafeteria,” I said. She agreed and we were off. I asked her what she would say to God if she died and were asked, “Why should I let you into Heaven?” “I’ve loved You my whole life,” she replied. She thought she had about a 75% chance of going to Heaven. I began to go through the Gospel with her and when I asked, “What’s the big thing Jesus has done to take away your sins,” She said, “He forgives you.” “I said, “What does he do so He can forgive you?” “His sacrifice on the cross.” She replied. I said she was right and began to explain His blood that cleansed her and the payment for her sin. She knew the story. I explained the righteousness of God Jesus earned and she liked the story if it being like extra credit she got in a class. I explained that it was all hers by faith and God could work all things into good. “Can I tell you a story?” she asked. I said, “Yeah,” enthusiastically. “This happened in 2022 so a couple years ago,” she began. She told me then that her mom had been in the city in a bad neighborhood and was shot in the head.  She touched her own forehead then just right off center above her eye. That put her mother into a coma but she came out of it and then they put her in a medically induced coma, for several more weeks. But when her mom came out of it she was ok, “She could walk and talk, she lost an eye but that’s not as bad as a life.” She said the neurologists working on her said they had never seen anything like it. “That’s when I got closer to God,” she said, this was also true of her mom she said. She had been to church regularly but had gotten too busy for it working weekends and going to school but planned to go back on the weekend. I asked her if she wanted to be forgiven for her sins trusting in what Jesus had done or thought something else. “When you pray for forgiveness are you thinking God would be merciful and just forgive you or were you thinking, ‘I know I will be forgiven because Jesus died for my sins?’” She said she struggled to have faith not in God but in History as people say it happened. I agreed it was hard to know what to believe coming in from outside. She said, “Talking to God is my faith.” Then saying, “Something is out there.” She replied. So I said. “Do you believe Jesus is God, He died for your sins and rose from the dead, do you think that’s a true story?” Thinking for a moment she said, “Yes.” So I said then if you wanted to be forgiven there is a prayer you could pray and I talked her through it and finished saying, you’d be saying Jesus is your God trusting in Him. You could pray it silently; I wouldn’t hear but God would hear you and you’d know. “I was reading it with you,” she replied. “OK, Amen?” “Amen,” she said. I said that now if she trusted in Jesus’ righteousness to be her righteousness the likelihood she would go to Heaven was 100%. “I appreciate that,” she said thankfully. I gave her Bible Promises for You and wrote her name and the date and forgiven in the front. I said she could read the verses for encouragement or turn them into a prayer or write them in people’s birthday cards.  “Thank you, I love this,” she said then in a matter-of-fact way said, “I like to write in birthday cards.” I gave her The Case for Christ Answer Booklet. This is like Christmas,” she replied. “Yep, Merry Christmas,” I said. I gave her a Bible Study and explained a bit of it. I told her I would pray for her each day, a Bible verse, from now until Spring and one year after. “Thank you,” she replied.  “If I see ya I’ll give ya a wave,” I said. I got up to go and said, “Merry Christmas.” “Merry Christmas to you too,” she replied and I was off. I bumped into her later by the vending machines and said, “God bless you.” and she said, “God bless you too.”

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

In Him,

Bob