Killing the Giants

Today marked the completion of "killing the giants" week. During this week all 63 students made every effort to share their faith at every opportunity, pressing on despite fatigue and desire to just take a nap. Since we don't have free time on weekdays until around 9 o'clock or so, that everybody would pair up to go sharing every night until 10:30pm or so. It was an enormous challenge to be faithful during this long days, but it was ultimately very worth it. While both myself and the project as a while fell short of the goals we set, conversations were initiated with 1525 different people, we were able to explain the gospel in its entirety (the person was taken all the way to be able to accept a saving faith in Christ if they so chose) to 400 people, and 6 prayed with us on the spot to recover Christ, all in a 7-day span. This was a truly exciting and rewarding experience, and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of amazing stories from all of these conversations. Stories of Christ followers we were able to pray with and encourage, of people who had never heard any of the gospel message before, international students here working for the summer (very, very common in Va. Beach due to the J-1 visa program), loads of people who proclaimed a Christian faith but did not have a true understanding of the role of Jesus and his death/resurrection, and many other unique situations. In addition to the people hearing the good news, we each were developed as well by participating so frequently in evangelism.

My most rewarding experience of the week was perhaps with a group of 4 high school age boys. A group of 3 of us initiated, and after a few minutes we split into 2 groups to make for more personal conversation. One of the 2 I was talking to, Tyrone, had never before heard the gospel and had very few preconceived notions. It is always exciting to share the gospel for the first time with someone because they aren't caught up in incorrect ideas about what they think they know or old bad experiences. Throughout the conversation he remained very invested in the conversation which lasted about an hour, and asked many very good questions. By the end he wasn't yet ready to receive Christ as his savior, but i sent him home with the KGP we were using so he has a reference point to all we were talking about, and have no doubt that the spirit was stirring in his heart. There is also no doubt that he had indeed come into new knowledge of who Jesus was and truly has the opportunity now to accept Christ as his savior.