Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope your day has left you warmed and filled by the Spirit. Pretty cold and snowy here, so they called off school in the afternoon and told everyone to skedaddle by 3. It was a ghost town by 2 PM but Brendan prayed to receive Jesus today. His story is below if you have some time. Please pray he grows in his faith. Znyia (pretty small black girl with long curly/wavy hair to her elbows) heard a quick expression of pretty much just the atonement. She was talking an on-line class on her laptop but wanted me to tell her the Bible Verses quick of how she could go to heaven. So I will hope to run into her again.

 Brendan was sitting in a set of sofa chairs in front of a round knee-high table with a hole in the middle. There’s a kind of a corner lounge at the foyer beside the door to the cafeteria. He had on a hoodie with a puffy black coat over it and light grey sweats. His straight hair was pulled back into a ponytail that went at least a foot down his back. He had a clean-shaven face and full cheeks, his features were sharp though, the bridge of his nose flattened slightly at the end, like it had been clay someone had pushed down and made a platform at the end you could place nickel on. I asked him what he would say to God if he died and He asked, “Why should I let you into Heaven?” “Probably not that I deserve to get into Heaven…  immediately,” he replied. He thought he had a 50/50 chance of going to Heaven. He went to a Catholic Church each week. He was a nice guy with an easy laugh. Each of the illustrations I say that you could take with slight amusement made him laugh a bit. For example I often say that when Jesus says, “this is eternal life, they know you” means that the Holy Spirit lives inside you. “Like you’re the Energizer Bunny and God’s the batteries, you keep going and going when you die it’s like you don’t die because God’s inside”. Then I will say, “but God can’t live inside you because of sin. You know the stuff that used to tick off your mom when you were a kid.” So he enjoyed listening. When I asked what Jesus had done to take away his sin so God could live inside him he knew, saying, “He died on the cross.” I agreed and began to explain that Jesus wanted to die and shed His blood. And I quoted 1John 1:7 “The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin”. So now you match God and He can live inside you. I explained it was how God was paid, that we owed Him a perfect life. So Jesus blood and righteousness was worth an infinite amount so it paid God back for all the imperfect things we had done to His world that we owed God something perfect to repay. I explained the righteousness of God to His credit quoting Isaiah 61:10 and Galatians 2:37. I said that all Jesus had done needed to be received by faith. “That you believe Jesus is God, He died for your sins and rose from the dead. Not that you just knew the story but that that’s what you place your trust in to be forgiven. So if someone would say to you, “Why should God let you into Heaven?” you’d say, “Because Jesus died for me.” That would mean you had faith in Jesus. Your works can’t save you because your good stuff can’t fix your bad stuff. I asked if he would want to be forgiven trusting in what Jesus had done, then He would live inside him and give him strength taking him to Heaven when he died. “Or do you think something else?” “The first one,” he replied. So I said if he wanted to be forgiven there was a prayer he could pray and I talked him through it asking, “Does this prayer express the desire of your heart?” He nodded aggressively without a word. So I said he could pray it silently, I wouldn’t hear but God would and he took the booklet and seriously said, “Thank you,” looking me in the eyes. He prayed then to receive Jesus. I told him he could keep the booklet and read through the Christian life list in the back saying, “Everything in the Christian life is “By the Spirit’s Power.” I explained living “Inside out”. I gave him Bible Promises for You and wrote his name and the date and “forgiven!” in the front. I also gave him a Bible Study and The Case for Christ Answer Booklet. I told him I would pray a Bible Verse for him each day until Spring and one year after. I said the likelihood he would go to Heaven now trusting in Jesus’ blood and righteousness was 100%. He was grateful and we said goodbye and I headed off.

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

 In Him,

Bob