Hey Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope you were blessed today, as I was on campus. Two girls, Nirali and Evelyn, each committed to faith in Christ, committing to pray later. I hope they will do so. Dinah and Lashunna each prayed to receive Jesus.  Thanks for your prayers that made these girls come. Please pray they draw near to Him.

Nirali is a pretty girl who looked like she was from an Indian heritage, her hair was swept up over her head kind of randomly curly and she wore a zippered hoodie and grey sweats. Evelyn, who went to church every Sunday, appeared to be African American. She wore a leather-look black baseball cap and jeans with a white short top. She had pretty features too and big eyes.  I walked up and asked them if they wanted to do a student survey for the Bible study group.  They hesitated, so I asked if they wanted to know how to get to heaven.  “Hey, you’re pretty, but even pretty girls die, everyone does, do you know where you are going?”  That somehow got them more willing to listen and Evelyn said, “Do we have to go anywhere?”  I said, “No, just right here I’ll ask you questions and write stuff down.”  “How long will it take?” she asked. I told them 5 or 6 minutes, but I forgot both would be talking and once I had their attention and they wanted to hear I got a little long-winded.  When I asked them what they would tell God to get into Heaven, Narali said, “‘Cause my family needs me.” Evelyn said, “Because I’m a good person.”  But when I had finished going through the Gospel I explained, “You know someday you’ll hope to find someone and get married, and what you want out of them more than anything else is you want them to believe you and you want to believe them. That is what God wants most from you. He wants you to believe Him.”  They nodded to that.  I finished explaining everything to them and said, “So the question for you ladies is, do you wish to have the free gift of eternal life?” Both of them said they wanted to be forgiven but were hesitant to pray. I think honestly enough it wasn’t very private, as we were in the line of chairs in the foyer leading to the cafeteria and people they knew had been walking by. (Ada who had prayed to receive Christ last week was one of them, so that helped a bit.)  They both promised to pray later.  We talked more and I explained a bit more of Christianity to them and asked, “If I asked, ‘Do you believe Jesus was God, He died for your sins and rose from the dead’ do you believe that?”  They each said they did.  “And will… do you now trust in that to take away your sins and make you right with God?”  They each said they did. So I said, “The Bible teaches if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead you will be saved.  So if you have trusted in this, God knows you have faith, can see your heart and forgives you.  The prayer is important to say to God, but God knows your heart.”  Nirali looked me in the eyes and her face brightened in realization.  I gave them each a copy then of a Bible study and the book 20 Things God Can’t Do. which they each wanted to have when I offered them books.  They said they would email me after praying, so I will pray they are moved to do that. But in my experience, most forget, as kids say that and I come upon them later asking if they have prayed and most have but never let me know.  I said I would pray for them each night if they prayed, but in truth I will be praying for them anyway.  I apologized for taking so much time and Evelyn said, “Oh you’re good.”  And I headed down the hall, first asking Nirali again to pronounce her name for me.

Dinah was sitting on the second floor overlooking the revolving doors. She had a slight accent and is from Ghana and goes to what she called a “Pentecost Church” that she said was from her country.  She had a warm, friendly face with a bit more pronounced features.  She wore brown stretch pants and a t-shirt.  She said she’d tell God, if He asked why He should let her into Heaven, “Because I was truthful.”  I said she should run for office and she smiled.  She knew the story of Jesus and when if I asked if she wanted to be forgiven and have God live inside her, or if God was on the outside of her life she said “God inside.” As I finished, I said, “I think you knew the story right?” and she nodded.  So I said, asking her if she had been believing in the Gospel to take away her sins, “But have you been trusting in the story?”  She thought for a moment and I asked, “When you pray for forgiveness, have you been thinking; ‘Well, I have been pretty good and God is good, so I hope He will forgive me.’ Or have you thought ‘I know Jesus has died for me, so I know I am forgiven’?  Were you trusting you were good enough, or in Jesus?”  She looked up at the ceiling, tilted her head back and smiled saying, “That I was good enough.” “Would you like to put your trust in Him?” I asked. She nodded so I walked her through the prayer, saying she could pray it silently and she did.  I explained the Holy Spirit’s power to work in her saying, “We don’t do good things hoping they will make us good people and God will forgive us, but we ask God to transform us with His Spirit on the inside and this makes us good people who do good things [for Him].  Christianity is the inside out, not the outside in.”  And I wrote “Inside out” on the inside of the booklet.  She wanted a copy of Bible Promises for You to read and I gave her a Bible study and got her email address.

I talked for a while with Nicolas, after hearing the end of a couple songs by a student cover band with a faculty horn section that was great out on the lawn by the MAC arts building.  He’s one of the guys from bible study and walked up to chat me up about his communist History teacher.  I said goodbye to him after about 30 minutes and talked with a girl on the lawn about the Cubs since she wasn’t interested in God (I know this is a pale second. But hey, sometimes a friendly conversation means they talk to me the next time).  And the I felt like I was supposed to go to the PE building before I left school, though feeling pretty spent.

I walked up the hill and through the upstairs door and passed a girl and guy chatting with another girl who turned me down. Then I went down the stairs and came up to Megan and Brionna, two a pretty black girls who prayed to receive Jesus last year, who I pray for and are nice to me.  They were with a couple white girls who were nice and walked off, and a couple black girls I haven’t met.  One of them I saw before when I bumped into Megan the first time this year in the cafeteria, Leshunna, (pronounced Leshon) though I hadn’t gotten her name before.  I sat on the floor with them a minute. They were busy talking about and texting boys (I gotta say I am about as out of place as you can get, sitting in the middle of a bunch of teenaged black girls. So it’s a miracle God has made them talk to me.)  Megan and Brionna are boy-magnet cute, which isn’t necessarily a blessing. So I stood up to talk to this guy Patel, who is an Indian guy and a wanna-be rapper.  He’d been talking up some of the athletes on the opposite side of the stairwell and was asking me what I had done in the summer and what I was doing now.  We’d never talked about what I did at school before.  He punched a cop at school year before last when the cop grabbed him, but prayed with me to receive Jesus back then so we are Facebook friends and I talk with him once in a while.  He is getting less crazy it seems and talks about how God is helping him.  I had stopped praying for him after a  year and a half of it, but I realize now I need to place him on the list again and I told him I would.  We were talking a few steps away from the girls and I headed out to go, preaching Patel up a bit on how Jesus claimed to be God, the “I AM”, and told him I would send him the Bible study on it as he thought it might make a good rap.  I went to go as Leshunna walked up, so I asked her her name and she kinda was asking who I was, as Megan and Brionna told her I pray for them.  So I told her I talk to people about Jesus and asked her what she would say to God if she died and God asked her why He should let her into Heaven.  She couldn’t answer it, so I asked her if she would like to know how to go to Heaven and she looked at me a little wide eyed and nodded a couple times.  She is a nice looking girl was wearing some print kind of leggings and a fleece.  She was a bit shy and glancing around (it didn’t help that there were some good looking guys sitting on the floor leaning against the wall across from where they were all congregating under the stairs).  But she listened to the Gospel and I explained it all to her and asked her if she would “want to be forgiven for your sins” (having showed her a couple verses already and quoted a bunch of other ones), “everything she had ever done.”  She glanced around and shook her head yes.  So I showed her the prayer, explaining it to her. I leaned in and I whispered to her, “So if you want to, you could pray this right now and God will forgive you and live inside you.”  She took the booklet and looked at Brionna who laughed at something unrelated on her phone and I said “Brionna prayed this last year.”  She read it, then sat down looked over at the boys and I sat next to her on a seat under the stairs, she looking at the booklet, and I asked, “Did you finish praying?” She stood up and turned her back to the boys and as I saw her finish, I quietly said “Amen.”  I stood and explained a bit more to her, but she did not want a book and had a small bible she liked at home. She didn’t seem to have anything with her to carry books in.  So I said I would see her later and said good bye to the others and left.

I had a good conversation with Sergio, a big guy who had played semi-pro football in Chicago and was walking by faith, (earlier in the day) in the science lounge.  He said, “You can say you have all the love in the world [for God] but if you don’t have trust, what’s the point?”  Good line, right?

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

In Him,

Bob