Added to their number daily those that were saved

After a week of decoding, our team was ready to start sharing our faith with students at UASD (pronounced “wahs”). Since we are all at various levels of experience with initiative evangelism, we spent the mornings equipping each other on how to use different tools to share the gospel including the Four Spiritual Laws booklets and Soularium (a tool that uses 50 interpretive photos to inspire spiritual dialogue).

On our first day of sharing, B and J went out and talked to Hector,* a student who considered himself a member of the Christian church but had never given control of his life over to God. While reading the invitation prayer to receive Christ from the booklet, he asked if he could read it again, this time from his heart. Praise God for revealing to Hector that he wants to have a personal relationship with him that will bring him true satisfaction in his life! Please pray for him this week and he finds community either through a church or Vida Estudantil so his relationship with God will grow.

A personal celebration comes from an experience I had today while bringing Esther* , a current member of Vida Estudantil, along with me to share our faith. We walked up to a group of three girls sitting near the English Immersion building (I was hoping this meant they might know some English!) It flustered me for a moment when I learned they didn’t speak English and I realized I’d have to take my first shot ever at initiating a spiritual conversation—and hopefully a gospel presentation—in Spanish! A great English speaker, Esther* was able to translate for me when my Spanish was lacking. As I got to ask the girls about their spiritual backgrounds, I learned that all of them believed that Jesus was God’s son but were not sure that they could be certain in their salvation through him. I got to share with them God’s grace in sending Jesus to die for our sins and that covers all of our future sins too. While they were not ready to receive Christ into their lives, it was a huge faith stretching experience for me to see the Holy Spirit allow me to understand their doubts and struggles with Christianity and communicate the basics of the Gospel!

While the title of this blog refers to what God has been doing in student’s lives on campus, the passage of Acts 2:42-47 has held great meaning to our team in the last couple of weeks. Only being introduced to each other one month ago, we are still learning how to serve one another in love, what personally uplifts us, and how to experience team unity. For example, something that I really miss from home that refreshes me is watching NFL with my family. It meant a lot to have the girls on the team say that if I teach them about the game, they’d watch it with me occasionally. Or committing to enjoy each other’s company through sharing dinner together at our weekly small group on Wednesday nights and lunch after our staff meeting on Fridays. Pray that we would continue to strive for authentic community and that we would prioritize our relationships with the Lord so that an abundance of love would overflow onto each other!