Big Wed and Thurs

From one of my teammates

"Wednesday and Thursday of this week will be two significant days for our ministry here in New Orleans/South LA. As I wrote earlier this month, we have been approved as a student organization at Tulane and Southern University. Each of these universities are very prestigious, and aside from LSU, they are two of the most visible universities in the state. Tulane, in the past, has been less than accommodating to Campus Crusade. It is a campus comprised of mostly out of state residents, a lot from the northeast, and it also has a large Jewish representation on their campus. Southern University is a prestigious African-American University in Baton Rouge. At this point, Tulane is, at best, reserved at our being on campus while Southern seems to be very excited. In fact, getting recognized at Tulane was a pretty long drawn out and very intentional process that took a couple of weeks. By God's provision, it took a couple of weeks less than expected. On the other hand, Southern was excited about us coming to their campus to start an organization. In fact, the drive from New Orleans to Baton Rouge took longer than it did for us to be a recognized student group there!

I am excited about both of these campuses for several reasons. One reason is because of personal ties to both universities. My grandmother worked for Tulane Medical Center for years, and several of my friends went to school there. And, one of my roommates in college was the starting quarterback for Southern.

Tomorrow we will be setting up tables at both universities. At the tables we will be handing out FSK's (Freshman Survival Kits). What that is, is a laundry bag w/ apologetic books, a Bible, a CD, a DVD, and other evangelistic materials. Scattered throughout the materials are links to an evangelistic website (if you want to check it out go to www.everyneworleansstudent.com). As we hand these bags out, students fill out spiritual interest surveys. Our desire as we hand out FSK's is two-fold. In our ongoing effort to reach lost students for Christ, our main desire is that the contacts we get from these FSK's would result in numerous appointments and conversations where we get to share the Gospel with students on these campuses. Our other desire is that we would find a few student leaders. As we look to work on 10 campuses this year, we need help. We need to find students who are committed to serving Christ and who have a heart to reach their campus for Christ. As we find those students, we have committed to coach and disciple them in ministry skills in order for them to help us reach their campus for Christ. So please pray that God would provide contacts for us to engage in spiritual conversations, but also that He will provide the student leaders we need to effectively reach these campuses.

Another reason I am so excited about these universities is because they are predominantly made up of out of state students. What that means is that as we win these students to Christ, build them up in their faith, and send them out in the world to have an influence for His Kingdom we will not only be sending these students back to scattered cities in Louisiana, but we will literally be sending these students, equipped with the Gospel, all over the country, and all over the world. We know that not everyone is called to full-time ministry, but we know that everyone Christian will have a ministry wherever they end up for their future vocation whether it be as a pastor, missionary, or even a doctor or engineer.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for your prayers for us here in New Orleans!"

Couldn't Have Scripted it Better

Events happened two days ago...

Typical day. Wake up and head to campus. Except today, instead of hitting campus alone, my director called and invited me along on one of his appointments. When I get to campus, he informs me that the guy we were supposed to meet ended up having to reschedule. In my mind, I'm thinking...it's going to be one of those days. Things one after another are probably going to go wrong.

Oanh. We decide to catch up a little (I just returned from a week long conference in Colorado) and to spend some time prayer walking on campus - praying that God would raise up laborers and student leaders on this campus. After we prayed, before he had to run off for a conference call, we decided to approach some students and do a few spiritual interest surveys. We talked to this one girl, wasn't expecting a whole lot since we were a little short on time. Turns out, she seemed to be a pretty strong believer, a freshman, and very interested in being a part of epic!!!

Saul. I come back to UNO at 2 to meet up with the guy that we had to reschedule with, and proceeded to have the most "textbook" evangelistic appointment ever. He's a student from Honduras (UNO apparently has some kind of partnership with Honduras since there's an insane number of students at UNO from there). He tells us about his spiritual background - grew up going to church, but was never really "into" it. He even made a distinction that he believed in God, but didn't have a relationship with Him. He also tells us that his father became a believer a couple years ago, and has seen drastic life change, which has caused him to be a lot more open. We go through the gospel, and what do you know, he prays to receive Christ as His Lord and Savior!!!!

Demetris. After that appointment, me and Antonio (one of my teammates) meet up with another contact we made from when we tabled. We've been praying that we would find a key Impact (African American ministry partnered with CCC) student to lead at UNO...and as we met with her, it seemed very apparent that she was the leader we had been praying for. After we shared the vision for reaching the campus, we asked her if she would consider being a part of it, and possibly leading...to which she replied, "I'm glad you asked, cause as you were talking, I was already thinking of ideas"!!!

God is at work!!! It's such a privilege to be a part of what He's doing!