WEEK 82- Gospel Odyssey Edition

 "There is no success, no failure, in God's kingdom when people choose obedience. In fact, this is one area of your Christian life that you ultimately cannot botch. Even if you share [the Gospel] stupidly, unlovingly, or with poor timing, our heavenly Father can use it. What He can't use is your silence."    -William Fay



If there was any one thing I'd dare say my church does well, it is preaching the Gospel. Once a year, we gather 90-100 highschool and college students in one place for no other reason than to explode with Jesus in one city, spreading His fame wherever and however we can. This week-long event is called Gospel Odyssey. In years past, Gospel Odyssey has been used to jumpstart a church plant. In fact, it's how my church in Cleveland Heights got started 6 or 7 years ago. However, we don't have the personnel to start a church every year, and it has been a fight for our elders to figure out how to use Gospel Odyssey effectively in the years between.

Now if you remember week 69, that was the experiment on which Gospel Odyssey this year was based- with three notable differences. One, we have 100 people. Two, I'm in charge of a bunch of kids (Responsibility? What's that?). Three, greatly expanded is the opportunity for free food.

WEEK 82- GOSPEL ODYSSEY

I've noticed a trend in my previous posts. If I can't complete a blog post in one or two sittings, it never gets done. So instead of giving you a blow by blow analysis of the week, I'm going to tell a few stories.


DAY 1:

In the middle of downtown Cleveland, with absolutely no adult supervision, were a half dozen boys between the ages of 8 and 12, sitting on a bench with nothing to do. So Diane (from our sister church in Montreal) and I gave them something to do.

Diane: "Does anyone want to talk to me?"
Really? That's your pickup line? A man would never be able to pull that off. But a woman? Every time.

Diane: "Do you guys have any spiritual beliefs?"
After this question, it was pretty easy to tell who was open and who wasn't. The two older boys to the side just wanted us to go away. They never said as much, but they made no effort to hide their facial expressions. The other three were great.

Diane: "Who is Jesus to you?"
For the three who were talking, it seemed as if they all had some background in Christianity. The youngest responded with some question about Jesus bleeding green.

Diane: "Do you believe in heaven and hell?"
Yep.

Diane: "Where do you think you'll go when you die, and why?"
This is where their answers began to fall apart. They all said heaven, but with words like "hopefully" and "I think", and it usually involved being a good person. The youngest was in his own little world of irrelevant questions.

At this point, we singled out Tariano, the boy who was most interested in what we were saying. His younger brother (Tory? I can't quite remember) squatted over his shoulder a few feet back. The 8-year-old drifted into ADD land.

For those of you keeping score at home, this line of questioning is known as the William Fay method. You could probably find youtube videos if you wanted to.

So we took Tariano through some verses (Rom 3:23, Rom 6:23, John 3:3, John 14:6, Rom 10:9-11, Rev 3:20). We asked him what each verse meant, and we wouldn't move on until he got it. But the kid was smart. Slowly but surely, he began to understand that salvation isn't about works or being good, but about what Jesus did. So we asked him again, "Are you going to heaven or hell?"

The "hopefully" disappeared, replaced with an increased love for Jesus.

The kid was quite happy with that, but something was still weighing on him. It turns out that Tariano's father is a militant atheist, and not that great of a dude either. He has a step-dad now, but there's still tension between Tariano and his father. So we prayed for his dad.

You could see it on his face. Something lifted. There was less weight on him. He looked younger all of a sudden. He was 12 again.

I made an effort to re-include the youngest one, but I didn't really get anywhere. You win some, you lose some. 


DAY 2:

I was feeling wussy in the afternoon, so I pushed for my team to just sing hymns/spiritual songs at the beach.

So when we got there, I just sang along while the highschoolers did all the heavy lifting, handing out invites (to the Thursday BBQ) and talking to passersby.

Just as I was starting to feel guilty for not doing a "real" job in the Gospel, a man approached.

This is the story of Vahid.

Vahid was born in Iran to a devout Muslim family. If memory serves, his parents were pretty involved, his dad being an imam khatib, but I might be making that up. Growing up, he believed what the media was feeding him, that Christianity was nothing to be taken seriously- that it was a religion of no substance or power or future, that it was dying. So he embraced Islam. And as he grew older, it became clear that something was wrong. Vahid didn't know about Christianity, but he was increasingly aware of one religion with no substance or power or future- Islam. Then one day, Jesus simply appeared to him. Vahid was not speaking metaphorically; Jesus just appeared to him.

Vahid got radically saved by the "substance and power" of Jesus Himself. So Vahid gave his life to Jesus, whatever the consequences.

Years later, those consequences would come. Vahid had started an illegal house church, and its effect was too big too hide. People were getting saved. Jesus was working in his life and through his life to touch so many different people. He faced persecution after persecution, to the point of almost certain death-- seven different times by his count. This all came to a head as he was standing before Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court for charges of apostasy and charges related to blasphemy. There was no hope; he was going to die. No hope, that is, except for Jesus.

But if all you have is Jesus, you have all you need.

Somehow, Vahid managed to escape and flee to the US as a refugee. Since then, Vahid has just been trying to make a living. He is working to become a commercial airline pilot, to which he says, "The hard part is over."

So Vahid, his wife, and his daughter heard us singing, and they were seriously touched. So Vahid came over and thanked us for what we were doing. He told us his story, we told him what we were doing, and we had a very sweet, very Christ-filled moment.

It sure corrected my perception that the singing was somehow less spiritual than face-to-face conversation time.

Nevertheless, facetime is still necessary and awesome, so we headed over to the downtown public square to sing some more and talk to people.

So we sang some more songs and tried to pass out some water bottles (now luke-warm). Eventually, I turned to Diane and said, "Want to William Fay it?" Yes. "William Fay" is now a verb.

Now, I don't know why I wanted to talk to people. I wasn't "feeling it" at all. Heck, I was barely in Spirit by that point. I just did it because I felt like it was the point of Gospel Odyssey. Like 1 Corinthians 9:17. So why do I mention this?

Well, we found this young Muslim man named Marcus. When we asked him about Jesus, he simply called Him an ambassador of God. He told us, "We basically believe everything you do except the Son of God part." Normally, Muslims are hard guys to talk to. But when we showed him the Bible verses, he just... got it. Every verse- he understood it, he digested it, and he got it. It was weird. It was too easy. I even slipped up a few times; I couldn't remember my next point, or I'd say something awkward or stupid. It didn't matter. This guy was reading the Bible and it was rocking his world. So we got to Revelation 3:20, and we told him, "Jesus is knocking at your door. Will you let him in?"

DUDE GOT SAVED!

Even when I was leading him in prayer, I barely could remember what a sinner's prayer was supposed to be like. I did NOTHING. Jesus worked through the encounter anyway. The whole conversation lasted 10 minutes, tops. Marcus saw the gift of God, and he took it. Just like that.

The follow-up has been weird, so keep praying, but this salvation experience was legit.


DAY 3:

By the time day 3 had come around, 15 people had prayed to receive the Lord through the Cleveland team (of part-timers) alone. There were only 15-20 of us on any given day. It's never been like this. I've never had a Gospel experience like this. For whatever reason, we were praying big, and God was answering every prayer with a definitive "YES". Wild, right?

So on day 3, I just canvassed the neighborhood all day, sticking invitations to the Thursday BBQ on doors. I think only one group really went out to talk to people. Yet despite this lack of face time, 4 more people got saved throughout the day anyway.

Later, we sang at the park to unwind, stopping by an ice cream shop on the way out. I called it a night and headed out.

After I left, apparently some members of my team got to talking to these college students. 4 of them also received the Lord.

Yeah. That's right. 23 salvations in 3 days with less than that many people. I know preaching the Gospel is about people, not numbers, but... c'mon. Let's be real. This is awesome!


DAY 4:

Rain!

I woke up in the morning to dim natural lighting. I looked outside, and seeing storm clouds, my first thought was, "Oh good, we'll have green grass again." It started pouring, and then it occurred to me. It was Thursday. The day of the BBQ. The day of the event we've been inviting people to all week.

The forecast looked bad. Rain all day. 50-90% in every hourly slot.

So I lifted a prayer up to God. Lord, give us good weather for the BBQ. And the rain slowed.

Every morning at 9, we got together to sing some songs and pray before heading out. This particular morning, moods were down. So we prayed, and the rain all but stopped.

But it wasn't enough. If people are going to come to a BBQ, the weather needs to be convincingly warm and sunny. For hours beforehand. So we prayed, and the sun shined brightly.

By this point, it was lunch time.

Feeling a little bit better about the weather, a bunch of us headed off to a nursing home to sing some hymns. It bears mentioning that the only reason we went to the nursing home is because someone printed out a bunch of these little "mission cards" and handed them to all the groups during orientation. They said things like "Pray in a circle of at least 20 people holding hands" or "Cast out an evil spirit" (Sadly, nobody accomplished this one) or "Sing hymns at a nursing home". We just wanted to finish our mini-missions.

So with nobody expecting us, we went awkwardly from room to room, asking people if they wanted us to sing for them.

Many responded in the affirmative, thanked us politely after we finished, but didn't really care that much. Others seemed to be more affected, telling us with that old-person charm, "You were wonderful!" But there was this one guy, Mr. Daniels, who brought us to tears.

Christina (another girl on our team) walked into his room and asked him, "Would you like us to sing for you?"
"Huh?"
"Would you like us to sing for you?"
"What?"
"WOULD YOU LIKE US TO SING FOR YOU?"
"Huh?"
"WOULD. YOU. LIKE. US..."

And so on, for several awkward minutes. The man was quite deaf, and probably on his deathbed for that matter. He didn't look too great.

"Oh, 'Sing!'", Mr. Daniels shouted victoriously.

So we started singing "In Christ Alone", and Diane quickly prodded me, saying, "You should sit next to him on his bed and hold the words up for him so he can follow along."

And as I sat down next to him, he began reading the words we were singing. With one hand, he pointed to the text, with the other, he began to hold my hand. And he cried.

"I'm a retired minister", he explained, still holding my hands. He was so excited to see young people continuing where he left off. He practically shouted it: "You made my day!"

And then he said this (read slowly for effect): 

"I am so happy that I will see you all in heaven."


The old man looked like his remaining time in this world was measured in months or weeks, not years. To think, these will be some of the final, comforting thoughts as he goes to be with the Lord. To think that the Lord could use us in this kind of manner. Whoa. I still can't get over it.

Unfortunately, we had to get going. I had a bunch of practical things to do before the BBQ.

That is, if it was going to happen.

I got back to the hall, and Ian (yes, the Ian who was supposed to keep me accountable for keeping this blog) looked grim. The forecast was worse than ever. 80-90% chances of thunderstorms every hour for the rest of the night.

"No," I determined. "It's happening. At Lakewood Park."
Ian shrugged his shoulders. "Pray," he said.

And he was right. I looked outside, and the sun suddenly disappeared. The clouds started coming. So I prayed. "Hold back the rain, Lord."

I ran some errands for Ian. "Hold back the rain, Lord."

I got back to Lakewood Park. "Hold back the rain, Lord."

One of my other bosses for the week (Mike) found Ian and me shortly thereafter, saying he wanted to pray a little bit for the BBQ. "Hold back the rain, Lord", he prayed.

Remember when I said that Jesus had been answering every prayer with a definitive "YES" this week?

The rain never came. Instead, droves of skater kids and other people we had met throughout the week showed up for some free food. At least twenty-seven new faces. Dozens of conversations relating to Jesus. The sky even cleared up before the BBQ was over.

And it rained overnight, so we got green grass anyway.


DAY 5:

It was still raining, but we had a baptism in the morning to kill time (whoo!!). And extra "Gospel" umbrellas for the afternoon.

Downtown seemed to be the happening spot, so I went with Sarah and Stacy to preach the Gospel. Parking was a nightmare, and I had to move my car a couple times, eventually just losing track of Sarah and Stacy altogether.

But I found Christina and Jessie near Tower City. Jessie went off in one direction, and as I was about to follow him, Christina, completely oblivious of her way with men, approached this homeless guy who was giving her the creepiest, most unhealthy, raping-you-with-my-eyes stare I have seen in years. So I changed my mind and joined Christina.

After feeling it out, we kinda just went William Fay again, since the man was unclear on his salvation. After that stare, so was I. He was pretty slow in the head, he could barely read, and he liked to hear himself talk, but we trudged ahead anyway. It was painstaking. We had his attention, so we really made him think seriously about every verse. He read. He paraphrased. He said something heretical about works or about backsliding, so we made him read and paraphrase again. Then he forgot what he read, and the process repeated.

Yet through all this, his demeanor was changing. That creepy look was gone. Instead, it was the look of a man wrestling with the Gospel.

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." We got to this verse, and he read and paraphrased it. We asked him about it, and he didn't get it. We tried to ask leading questions, and he didn't get it. We made him paraphrase clause by clause, and he got it a little bit, but then he would drift off into some rant about backsliding.

"What does this verse say about backsliding?"
Nothing. That's what it says about backsliding.

So he read it again. He paraphrased again. He answered our questions about it. He seemed to get it. And there it was again. Something about "starting over" when you backslide.

"No man, do you confess that Jesus is Lord? Do you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead? Then you are saved! Period. Backsliding is bad, but you don't have to let backsliding get in the way of your relationship with God. You are saved!"

Bam. He got it. And his face was glowing! His face had been that of a vile creeper, then that of one wrestling with the Gospel, then glowing like one who had just touched something of Christ. He was a different person. He was so happy!

It is a privilege untold to experience moments like these.


As the afternoon wore on, I was running out of time and boldness. So I prayed, "Lord, if there's anyone you want me to talk to, make it obvious."

Right then, a scary-looking thuggish black dude called out to me. I don't even remember what he said, but his tone seemed friendly enough, and the whole thing seemed to be the Lord's leading, so I engaged him along with his two friends in conversation.

This man was VERY high. The three of them had been passing around a bottle of vodka, which was in addition to the empty beer cans, the joint of weed in his right hand, and the joint of a mystery white substance in his left. I got a bit of a second-hand buzz just breathing in the fumes. Sorry, Mom.

As you can imagine, preaching to someone who's high is... interesting. And dangerous. One moment he'd be normal; the next he would be angry to the point where I was expecting an imminent physical attack. A second later he'd be cracking jokes with his friends. There was a point in the conversation where he shed real tears over Lebron leaving Cleveland.

His religious affiliation was with the Nation of Islam, which is basically black Islam, which basically means they hate everybody. He told me, "I think I'm going to heaven. But I know I'm going to hell." Yet he wouldn't accept anything I had for him, even a better way, a way that didn't involve hell. He was incredulous that I'd be talking about sin and the Bible in the very moment he was doing drugs, and he wouldn't let me get very far in the ways of a Gospel message. I tried to press, but it made him angry, and even more so it made his friends angry. These guys were bad dudes, and I did not want to make them angry.

Eventually our time simply ran out. I have no idea what got through. It was the only conversation all week that I especially felt was intentionally and specifically ordained by God, yet I don't get to see the results.

As they were leaving, the man left behind some litter. I picked it up, and he pointed out the trashcan across the park. It didn't occur to me until I was halfway there that I was carrying an open can of alcohol in public (which I'm pretty sure is illegal), right after talking to the guy about sin and stuff. I found humor in the situation.


Cleveland team statistics:
-Salvations:
     Goal: 25
     Actual: 27
-New faces at the picnic:
     Goal: 10
     Actual: 27
-Fliers distributed:
     Goal: 10,000 by Thursday afternoon
     Actual: 10,000 by Thursday afternoon
In addition, we accomplished 18 of our 22 mission cards.

Gospel Odyssey statistics:
-202 Contacts (people interested in learning more, attending a Bible study, going to church, etc.)
-2 baptisms
-106 salvations


So, who wants to go preach the Gospel with me next week?

Week 78

Back in June and July, I went to the MasterWorks Festival (Google it) for four weeks to whip my horn chops into shape. Most of my performances were done by the third week, meaning I had too much time to kill in the last week. Hmmm... How to kill some time...?

WEEK 78- Preaching the Gospel with David

So David is a saxophonist (Christ died to save even saxophonists) from California. We were in the same program at MWF, so we got to talking a little bit, and Gospel preaching sounded like fun, so we went for it.

We drove to a Walmart in the middle of a conservative Indiana town, got out of the car, and started talking to people. Sort of.

I say, "sort of", because the moment I said, "Could I interview you?" or "Could I ask you a question?", people ignored us completely. It was weird. I've never been in a culture where talking to people- not even about Jesus, but about anything- in public is so socially unacceptable.

We tried and tried and tried, and no one would talk to us.

We found one highschool-aged kid, who gave us the time of day, but said he didn't want to participate.

So that was my Gospel preaching experience that week. If I go back next summer, I want to try again. But I'll have to be more creative. Maybe a smoothie stand.

Week 73

If I haven't said it before, it bears repeating. Gospel preaching is one of the most internally painful things to begin, and also one of the most internally awesome things once you're into it. It's a bad combination for the slacker and procrastinator that I am, but great for Christ who lives in me.

That being said, I still haven't finished my last blog post. Figures.

So Shulamite called me Monday afternoon, wandering if I wanted to go preach the Gospel with her.
"Heck no!" I thought.
"Sure!" I said. "But can I get a nap first?"
I'm still not sure whether this was a stall tactic or if I was legitimately concerned with having coherent conversations. Either way I went to sleep, having not set my alarm, figuring I would just wake up in an hour.
Six hours later, I awoke, confused by the hue outside my window.

WEEK 73: Preaching the Gospel with Sarah, Shulamite, and Ian

The light was fading, but that's perfect for Coventry, the local late-night hangout. We split up into two-man teams- Ian and Shulamite went off in one direction; Sarah and I wandered around in no direction. Then she asked me if I was stalling (which I wasn't; I was just still in a daze), and we actually started talking to people.

These two girls in their late teens were willing to be "interviewed", and they were quite open. We used the John 3:16 method again (see the previous post, or the video I posted a year ago), which was a nice starting place, but the real quality was after. Emily and Brie both grew up Catholic, but stopped going to church a number of years ago. They didn't see the value in it, and they were unhappy with the Catholic position on gay marriage. When I asked them what their relationship with Jesus was like, I'm not sure that they had a clear answer. Emily occasionally prays at night, to the effect of "If anybody's listening, I could use some help down here," which is an awesome prayer if you ask me. In retrospect it's quite a thought to think that God might have used us to answer that prayer. Yet for the time being, they were drifting further away from Jesus.

I must be getting better at Gospel preaching, because instead of floundering in my words in an attempt to show why a life with Jesus is better than a life without, I just kept asking them about the Bible.

"Could we look at another verse?"
No fancy flash cards this time. I took out my pocket-Bible and had them read the beginning of 1 John.

   "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full." (1 John 1:1-4 NKJV, italics added for emphasis)

"How would you describe John's relationship with Jesus?"
Ok, ok. I know John knew Jesus in the flesh (she almost called it on me too), but I'm of the position that this also apply to our lives today. I mean, it's the same life that is manifested to both of us. There's something about interacting with Jesus-- hearing Him, looking at Him, examining Him, handling Him-- that leads to life being manifested.

The slightly abridged conversation thereafter (15 minutes condensed into a dozen lines):
"Does John's relationship with Jesus match your own experience?"
   "No."
"Why is John 'declaring' this to you?"
    "That we 'may have fellowship.'"
"And why is John writing about this fellowship?"
(At this point I realized that I accidentally stopped at verse 3 before, so I had them read another verse.)
   "So that 'your joy may be full.'"
"Do you want this kind of joy?"
   "Yeah."
"How do you get this joy?"

After summarizing the verses and connecting it back to John 3:16, I still felt like something might have been missing, so I brought out the home-run bat, 2 Corinthians 3:18.

"There's a similar verse in 2 Corinthians-- I think it's 3:18...." (Nailed it!) "'But we all, with unveiled face, beholding... the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory....' You know what? If you're a gay Christian..." (it had to come back some time, right?), "...you have two ways of looking at your sin. One, you can try to stop living a gay lifestyle. That's very hard to do. Not many people can do it. But the other way is this: you behold the Lord, and you are just... transformed. You don't focus too much on your sin; you just behold the Lord. And there's glory there."

I had to explain the "glory to glory" bit when Brie asked, "So gay Christians just turn straight?", but otherwise, I think they got it.

"I've never heard it explained to me like that before!"

That felt good.

"Where do you go to church? I might check it out."

That also felt good. Seriously, why is it so hard to get myself to go out and preach the Gospel!?

We prayed with them while we were there, but keep praying for them anyway. I didn't have a flier on me, but my church comes up first on Google. I don't know if that's enough. This is a critical time, when it's very easy for those seeds to be snatched away. Pray, pray, pray.



It was Sarah's turn next. I held the camera phone, which I found out was completely for appearances, since my phone doesn't save videos longer than 5 or 6 minutes. Whatever. It makes people comfortable. So we found this middle-aged guy (we didn't get a name) who was in a hurry to get somewhere, so we were only able to talk for 5 minutes. I think we made it through John 3:16 though. I wish I could remember more details.

Since Sarah didn't get a real turn, she initiated the next conversation too. Before talking to the middle-aged man, we were passed from behind by a dude on a skateboard with some sweet tats and a friendly disposition. He was talking with some fellow skater kids down the street, so we hit him up on our way by.

Xander was something of a pluralist, or a vague spiritualist, or whatever you want to call that line of postmodern thought. He said he believes in Jesus, but that he likes to take things from many religions to enrich his own life. So we asked him what he thought of John 3:16.

"I like it. I like the thought of believing in something above yourself."
Good start.
"Do you think it matters whether or not this verse is absolutely true or not?"
   "Not really. The basic principles are there."
"Does it bother you what this verse says about people who don't believe in Jesus?"
   "Not really. I mean, Muslims believe in God, and other religions believe in God. As long as you believe in a higher power, right?"
"What does this verse say you have to believe in to receive this eternal life?"
   "Oh, yeah. I guess that's Jesus."
"Does that change the way you look at other religions?"
   "Actually, yeah, I would say so."

As he was showing us his tattoos, his friend, kind of a black hipster, came over. We were close to a good stopping point with Xander, so we prayed for him, his family, and for people in prisons. That's what was on his mind. Out of nowhere Andre (Xander's friend) asked if he could pray for us.

I'm never really sure how to respond to that, so I asked, "Who... do you... pray to?"
He said something convoluted, but it sounded like "Jesus", so I told him to go ahead.

His prayer was awesome! I don't remember what he said, but there was life there! Xander even commented afterward, "Wow, I really felt that." And as it turns out, Andre is a youth pastor.
All right! We have an ally! 

I know where he works, so hopefully I can visit him later this week. Cool guy.


An hour had suddenly passed, so we found Ian and Shulamite to see if they were ready to head out. They were not. They saw a mutual friend of ours in Jimmy John's, so they wanted to see how he was doing.

Bonus round!

We found this big 'ol black lady with her hands full of Chipotle, walking around near the restaurant and apparently up for a conversation, so we talked with her for a bit. She was in a hurry, and we only got halfway through the verse, but she seemed to love Jesus, so that's cool.

A few yards away were Shayla and Hanna. If memory serves, Shayla called herself a Christian, or maybe "kind of" a Christian. Hanna just liked to talk. A lot. Circularly. We were there for almost an hour, and I'm not sure we talked about anything you couldn't fit in a five minute conversation. Hanna was pretty committed to the position that you can't take the Bible literally, which she explained to us any time she needed to change the subject to avoid a difficult question. The discourse was fun and everything, but I can't help but think at some point I should have just cut her off and started straight-up preaching at her (in love, not anger). It hadn't been a real conversation for a while anyway, only an opportunity for her to preach at us. I'll try to see what I can get away with next time.


Shulamite was hungry, so we got pizza and swapped Gospel stories. Good times.

Week 69

Ok, so I kinda forgot my blog existed for a year there...

Anyway, this past school year happened.

Now you're up to speed.


WEEK 69 (I hope my math is right): Preaching the Gospel with a bunch of friends from my church

So this year, I've been doing an internship part-time with my church. It kind of rocks. I submit as evidence: this week, a bunch of full-time interns from Cleveland have come to my hometown of Hanover, PA, with the sole purpose of preaching the Gospel. Here's the story.

DAY 1:
My car was supposed to leave early Monday morning (5/7), but it got stuck in the shop for the weekend, so I had to wait until 9. Then it turned out that a part they needed (a brake sensor) hadn't actually arrived in time for them to work on my car, so I had to wait another hour. Then it turned out the sensor still wasn't working, so I had to wait another hour while they figured it out. Then it turned the sensor wasn't the only problem, and that a wire was cut somewhere, so I waited another hour. The wire was somehow high-tech, so any ordinary wire wouldn't do; ordering a part would take another day, so they basically said, "Let's see if we can make one", and then they somehow did. That's why I love my mechanic. We were out of Cleveland by 3.

So my car got to Hanover too late to do anything but meet up briefly with the whole team (over cake) to talk logistics- and then hit up Corbin Moon (a CIM freshmen and brother, also from Hanover) at his place to crash for the night.

DAY 2:
It was rainy. And gloomy. The locals were mostly unsociable. God is still awesome.

We started the day with some prayer/songs/worship, then headed out to various places where we'd expect large globs of people. So I arbitrarily teamed up with an intern from Ann Arbor named Renee and headed to a grocery store. Fun fact: only old, retired folks do their grocery shopping before noon.
"Excuse me, we're on a fact-finding mission; could we ask you a question?"
"Well, ok."
"In your opinion, who is Jesus Christ?"
"Well he's my savior!"
This was how the first five conversations started. Old people in Hanover are well indoctrinated. Luckily, their responses were also extremely genuine, and their belief was not mere head-knowledge. And they each took time to encourage us and told us to keep at it, so that was nice. But we weren't really doing anything especially fruitful by talking with them, so Renee and I decided to move to another store in hopes of finding some heathens or something.

Well, we found a greater variety of people, but the conversations were kind of lame.
"Excuse me, we're on a fact-finding mission; could we ask you a question?"
"No."
Then when we got conversations started (for which we were actually pretty successful- the above conversation only happened 2 or 3 times), we found that a lot of people ranged from apathetic to cold. Not to rip on the Catholics, but dang, take Christ out of religion and it absolutely kills people. If it wasn't clear, Hanover is the kind of town where everyone is a Christian, and yet seemingly no one is a Christian. The apathy is gut-wrenching. We actually did find a pleasant elderly born again Christian, but her husband was clearly uncomfortable at our presence. I would probably describe his expression as "horrified".

Maybe the best conversation we had all morning was with a Jehovah's Witness, though it wasn't really a conversation at all; to be honest, I was really impressed with his ability to deceptively control a conversation. He seemed like he really wanted to have a discussion, but as soon as the words "What do you think about the verse that says..." came out of my mouth or Renee's, he would remind us again that he really had to get going (though with enough time to quote another one of his verses at us).

All nine of us met up for lunch at Corbin's house. It seemed like Renee and I were not alone in our experiences. Food and prayer was required. We waited out the rain for an hour and headed back out.

Change in tactics.

So for the afternoon, we brought out the big guns: some free umbrellas, a camera, and John 3:16. For the next hour and a half we only had 3 conversations (they were long and awesome), 2 of which are on video (I might publish them later?). For the record, people might not like talking about eternal things, but they love being interviewed. Anyway, the first conversation was with a woman on break outside of a hair salon. We walked her through John 3:16 and got her to explain the verse to us pretty well. But as we were asking her about her spiritual beliefs later on, it became clear that something was off. Namely, she wasn't going to church. She used to go to church, but the fact that she was divorced sent waves of condemnation in her direction, so she stopped. Frankly, I believe her; hypocrisy in the Church is a big problem around these parts. I tried to console her and encouraged her to try church again, but she was not interested anymore. It was saddening.

After the conversation, we felt bad that we couldn't quite communicate the importance of church, so Renee found Matthew 16:16-18 for me. I like the verse because it ties "I will build My Church" very closely to the question "Who do you say that I am?". Renee likes the "gates of hell" part.

Gordan and Gloria talked to us next. The pleasant elderly couple loved God and were kinda awesome. Renee was especially glad that they came by.

Next we stopped by some workers on break outside of the Dollar Store. Renee interviewed one of them, Teresa. Something about this conversation seemed oddly familiar. Teresa explained the verse to us fairly well, but again, something was off.

Exact same problem.
Exact same grievances with the Church.
Different response.

This time, we were armed with the Word of God! Matthew 16:16-18, bam! Teresa thought about it for a little, and then came to the conclusion that she really needed to go back to church. Since her last church was so awful, we offered to help her find one. She was interested, and we got her contact info. Huzzah!


DAY 3: Coming soon...

Weeks 5-9

Coming soon...

While I have a few minutes of free time...

After my week 4 adventures (a blog update will eventually come, I promise), there's a very small part of me that wants to take a break from the normal Gospel preaching and just go out and pray for people. And when I was thinking about it, it reminded me of a movie I watched a few years ago that I think some of you might enjoy. If you come from a conservative Christian background, this might be a little bit weird. But I like the overarching message about love vs. agenda.

Here is the playlist I just put together.

Week 4 (coming soon)

I didn't forget. Expect an update soon. :)

Zane