Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Hope you are staying healthy and the Lord is with you. God blessed me on campus today and Pete & Page each prayed to receive Jesus. I had good conversations with some peeps I know too. One girl ‘C.’ who prayed to receive Christ last Spring has had a hard life, having been taken from her mom and adopted as a “Heroin” baby. She had the shakes as an infant and would cry all the time. But she is kind of a miracle baby since she was an athlete in high school with state qualifying times in track. ‘C.’ was pregnant without a husband when she received Jesus last year. She miscarried the child over the summer and broke up with the father, who was a jerk. She is doing well and has changed her major to nursing, as she wants to care for babies. I pointed out to her that though this might be the worst thing that will ever happen to her, God might already be making a good thing out of it.  She has a Christian guy interested in her now and is committed to purity and has a new career in mind.  I gave her 20 Things Good Can’t Do and wrote Romans 8:28 in the front for her to read. She told me a lot about her life and was pleased to have a new book.

Pete was sitting in a chair against the wall in the big lounge where we have Bible Study on Tuesday nights. I sat at his feet. He plays football and hopes to play in the NFL–safety or linebacker. Perfectly groomed beard made lines on his face and lip, with a short sleeve shirt on and skinny jeans. He was African American, about 220lbs and a bit over 6’ tall, kind of a teddy bear face, ball cap on. He had gone to church when he was a kid, thought he couldn’t remember the name, one near his family’s house. Nice guy. He was 90% sure he would go to Heaven saying, “I’ve done a lot of generous things, give people things, never stole anything.” He listened to the Gospel straight through attentively. When I asked what Jesus had done to take away his sins he guessed “Baptism?” “Well that is symbolic of it.” I said and explained the atonement and imputation. His buddy with head phones on, standing a step and a half to his left, said loudly they had to go and walked off. His class was starting, but he went 6 minutes late and listened to me finish. I offered him a prayer to be forgiven when he said that is what he wanted, and he read it through, considering it a moment after I read the line: “Is this prayer the desire of your heart?” He paused and decided saying, “Yeah.” So I said if he’d like, he could pray it through quickly, knowing he had to run. But to his credit he took the booklet and closed his eyes praying slowly each phrase. When he finished, I told him more about the Christian life and put the date and his name in the front of Bible Promises for You, also giving him a Bible study and telling him I would pray for him and would pray he’d get in the NFL, “Who knows, maybe God will do that with you,” I said. He grinned. I shook his hand and he looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you.” And he headed off to class.

At the end of my day, Page was sitting upstairs in the BIC on the second floor. She was a solid built person with her light brown hair pulled straight back behind her head into a pony tail. She had plastic glasses in a kind of orange/pink pastel color on a warm round face. She’d said she wanted to get married and I said my wife was always really nice to me and it was great, though it was work sometimes. I told her about knowing God, that He lived inside her with His Holy Spirit. “Like you are the energizer bunny and God is the batteries. You keep going and going and when you die it’s like you don’t die because God’s inside.” I explained. And she laughed a hearty kind of laugh, like she hadn’t heard anything that had struck her that way for a while and she’d been saving it up. She said she’d tell God, if asked why He should let her into Heaven, “Because I’ve done no wrong.” She sounded a bit defensive when she said it. Students say things like that sometimes, but they are not thinking they are perfect (well most of them) but more like they never did something really bad in a culturally relative sort of way. She later said she’d have a 75% chance of going to Heaven. She went to Catholic Church when she was younger and was confirmed I discovered later when I asked her if she had a Bible. The church had given her one then. She listened closely to the Gospel without a hitch, even when the lounge behind us cleared out and the seats in the hall as well, as students entered to adjacent class rooms. When I had explained how she was forgiven and Christ’s righteousness was imputed to her she said, “Thanks. I really needed this. I’m going through a lot right now. My mom is really sick in the hospital.” “I’m so sorry” I said. “I’ll pray for her. What is her name?” “Judy,” she replied. “She has some very large kidney stones.” I said I’d had those and was really sorry. Her mom has passed one and the other is lodged. She thanked me and I told her if she believed, God would adopt her as His child. He wanted most what she would want from a husband someday, to be able to believe him and for him to believe her. I said if she believed Jesus was God, had died for her sins and rose from the dead, and trusted in that, if someone asked, ‘Why should God let you into heaven?’ You’d say, ‘Jesus died for me.’ “If you trust in this, you have faith in Jesus and what he did. You are saved by faith. Though you should do good things to please God, your good stuff doesn’t fix your bad stuff. But God can turn bad things into good things and promises to do so,” quoting Rom. 8:28, suggesting God might have used her mom’s illness to open her up to talk to me. She wanted to be forgiven for her sins and after I explained the prayer to her, Page decided to pray receive Christ and did.  I gave her Bible Promises for You to give to her mom and 20 Things God Can’t Do and a Bible study. She thanked me and I told her I would be praying for her. She walked towards the door of her class room and walking after her a few steps I said, “Page, this is 100%,” pointing at the question asking what % she thought it was she’d go to Heaven. “Because if you are trusting in Christ’s righteousness to be yours, how righteous was Jesus? 100%.” She thanked me again and slipped through the door.

So thanks for your prayers for the ministry and for evangelism today if you had a chance.  God blessed my day of work.

In Him,

Bob