Furthering the Kingdom at ASU
Man, let me tell you, it’s been a whirlwind. We’re out the door by 7:50 AM, and average coming back to the house around 10:30 PM. Aside for a few hours break in the middle of the day, that time is entirely focused on achieving the team mission; to further the kingdom at ASU. We’re coming home exhausted, but satisfied. In three days, we’ve promoted, executed, and followed up on ten different free talks, and that number will rise to eighteen in the next two days. There are too many stories to fit them all in one email, but I thought it would be interesting to describe some of the great experiences we’ve had so far.
I think one story that really sums up the week is that of Benjamin. On Monday, Ellis sat down with a kid after lunch, and they got to talking. He described himself as an atheist/agnostic, which led Ellis to ask what he thought of Jesus. “Well,” he replied, “I believe that Jesus was both God and man.” Ellis was caught off guard, but pretty excited. After further conversation, he asked if Benjamin would like to pray to accept Jesus into his heart. He didn’t want to pray out loud, so Ellis prayed while Benjamin followed along in his heart. Awesome! Two days later, John Burgess sits down at a table of college kids after one of the lunch talks and gets chatting with them, and eventually two leave. He’s still talking to the last one about where his faith is and all that, and he mentions that he really wants to pray out loud because he hasn’t accepted Christ verbally. So John prays with him and is feeling pretty good about this kid’s salvation, and then he introduces himself as Benjamin. And goes on to say that he’d actually prayed with some British guy named Ellis a few days ago, but wasn’t sure it counted since it wasn’t out loud. Ellis jokes that was John cleaning up after him, the rest of us call it God working in stages. But the rest of us are pretty generous people, so who’s to say?
Maybe the most intriguing story comes from Eric Engelland. He was talking to a man at lunch yesterday in his mid 40s that introduced himself as Merit, but some of his friends called him Quan, and still others had shortened it to just Q. Over the course of conversation he finds out that the man is homeless, and came to Arizona from Philadelphia nine years ago to escape some bad history. He’d had a faith but really had fallen away from it in recent years and was just really asking for a sign to calm him and let him know God still cared. The whole name of this week is FEARLESS Q. So he shows up at ASU that day and sees, everywhere he looks, “FEARLESS, Q.” Everything will work together for the glory of God, right?
Like I said, there’s no way to fit everything into an email, but you should know that God is moving here.
-Eric Anderson for the ASU Go Team
