short update on the fellowship meetings, etc.

Last Friday we had two initial efforts at fellowship meetings that happened simultaneously in two separate locations.

The one that Galen and Beth and I participated in was very powerful.  (It sounds like the other meeting went well too!  You can read about it in Stacey’s blog.)  As we started reading the scripture, one of the Japanese students, interrupting the “flow” of the study, said, “Can you guys just tell me what the ‘core’ of Christianity is?” (In an almost exasperated tone!) I smiled and then pulled out blue books for everyone (a tract that GCC publishes that explains the gospel very clearly in a bridge diagram) and we walked through the gospel.

As we neared the end, and after we covered the topic of eternal separation from God, she interrupted again and said, “Just tell it to me straight – what does this mean for me!?”  I paused and said very gently that if she dies without ever having trusted Christ for eternal salvation that she would experience hell.  There was another long pause and she, along with the other students, were visibly taking that message to heart.

A little later she said, “I never knew how important Jesus is.”  She said that she had thought he was just a “good teacher” on the same level as Buddha, Krishna, etc.  (Her father is a Buddhist priest, btw.)  But then she emphasized again that now she knows how important He really is.

She also added near the end of the evening that she was looking forward to going home and sharing the tract with her father.

PLEASE ask God to reveal His mercy to this young woman and her family.  Please also pray that she will come again and the Father will draw her to Jesus.