Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Hope you are safe and warm if you live around Chicago, ha or anywhere else it is easier to do.  I had a bit of a shorter day due to the wet blizzard and the cops, but Tim prayed to receive Christ today so that was cool.

When I got to school I had a sense I should go right up to the third floor, so I did.  I talked with Demi right away, small auburn haired girl, braces on her teeth.  She was willing to talk about God because her boyfriend was really religious, though God was not important to her.  She was sitting in a little lounge adjacent to two offices overlooking the big one where we have Bible Study.  She laughed pretty loudly as we talked and I offered her the prayer to think about after going through the Gospel.  I had walked down the hall and had a voice in my head sort of, (a distinct impression anyway) said to give her the book I had just got this morning in the mail.  Campus Crusade for Christ was moving a warehouse and had a sale for a $1.20 on a book their president wrote: Enjoying Your Walk With God.  I bought a bunch cause they were cheap.  I hadn’t read it yet but I knew the author gave it to people who asked him about God. [The UPS guy dropped them off a half hour b4 I left so I grabbed one.]  I walked back and gave her the book, which she took openly and thanked me for, and I left.  I did a loop, and in the hall south from there where Tim prayed to receive Christ.  I walked up the hall and talked with a strong Christian, Ericka, and encouraged her about forgiveness a bit and prayed with her in the same lounge Demi had left. I guess that was too much for some bureaucrat who had been watching.  As we talked, Erika gave a hard look at a cop who walked through.  I couldn’t see his face.  I didn’t think much of it and walked off to go down to my locker.  As I was coming out of the room, the cop asked for my ID and starts in with “do you know why I am talking to you”.  I said I didn’t.  He said I had said something offensive to someone in earshot of my conversations, trying to suggest you could not say anything offensive to anyone.  I pointed out that was impossible to do and that students were saying offensive things to almost everyone all the time.  He said he got called out to talk to them too about the use of profanity and the like.  He tried to suggest I could not talk to random people, because they might be offended, said I was on a campus open to the public and asked if I had been talked to b4.  I said I had last year.  I talked him through it and he suggested they had told me not to talk to people.  I said they hadn’t.  That gave him pause, so he pulled back a bit saying “well you have been talked to about this 2 times, don’t make it 3.”  He suggested I use my indoor voice, which was funny in hindsight.  You can have conversations if no one else can overhear you?  I shook his hand and left.  I wasn’t going to argue with him or point out he was trying to limit my constitutional right to freedom of speech and religion, why bother?  But obviously if this is a policy, it is unenforceable and holds no penalty.  Last year I checked.  It is not a policy in writing anywhere.  He did not threaten me with “after a 3rd time then this thing [he can do] will happen,” I believe because nothing can happen.  If I am polite to him and he has no one I actually talked to complaining, they can’t write a ticket.  So I guess the plan is to simply try to intimidate you and waste your time.  Really bugs me though, and it is draining, but I have to try to stay under the radar.  It was looking worse and worse weather wise so I wasn’t going to stay much longer.  I went by a table where a few of the students I know often sit.  Ironically they were having a conversation about a word one of them had just used (which I had thankfully missed) that they all thought was too nasty to use in public.  I left before I had to hear it so I would not have to call a cop, lol.

Tim was an interesting guy. Tall, wearing a cap, eating a peanut butter sandwich.  He had not really gone to church much but had learned about God at a YMCA camp. There, as a kid, he and some friends had made a cross.  He somehow got to bring it home.  It seemed like they had a raffle and he got it.  He prayed at home and had the cross on his wall.  He did not know the Gospel at all and after I went through it he said he wanted to be forgiven and believed God and Christ were inside him.  As I read the prayer, he read it with me and said “Amen.”  I gave him The Case for Faith to read and got his e-mail to send him some stuff.  He got up to go to class and offered he his hand in thanks and we shook.  So I will be praying for him and will send him some stuff to read. So that was great.

So please pray for Tim and ask the Lord with me that Demi might be saved.

Then if you would pray I can stay out of ear shot of the liberal women at COD who like to call the cops on me, or that God would remove them. I know a lounge to stay out of this year, I guess, but it kind of bums me out to be looking over my shoulder.

In Him,

Bob Bollow