Groups Investigating God

Now that I have laid somewhat of a foundation for the experiences I have been through the past few weeks, I can explain one of the coolest things I have been a part of in a while.

The past couple of weeks on Wednesdays, a group of students in Cru get together on Hayden Lawn to pray for the campus. This past Wednesday only three of us showed up. We prayed for a while, and after a while, one of the guys asked if we wanted to go and share the Gospel with some people of campus. I was definitely excited to go. I had just experienced a cool opportunity open up the night before just by approaching a girl after prayer. However, before I could respond the other guy with us told us that he was going to preach. In my mind, I was thinking that he was kind of crazy. We have had a lot of street preachers on our campus lately who have experienced mixed results. But we fully supported him and knew he had a good heart. We prayed for him, and he took off to the middle of campus to begin to preach.

I sat with my friend Zach as our friend Joel began preaching to those passing by on campus. I told Zach to be on the lookout for people who we could possibly approach and follow up on in response to Joel's preaching. Zach pointed out three students that were sitting on a curb close to where Joel was preaching. I was pretty eager to approach them because they appeared to be international students, and lately, international students have really been on my heart, yet I have never taken a step of faith in responding to that passion.

As we approached them, I awkwardly tried to initiate conversation with them by asking them what they thought about the street preaching. I kind of botched the opening statement, but lucky the international students were very gracious and very open to conversation. I introduced myself and found out that they were international students from China. I was very excited to find this out because I am planning on going there this summer. There were very receptive and open to talking about things. The conversation was not one way, and they were very eager to communicate. I believe that Joel's preaching cleared the spiritual atmosphere to give me the opportunity to approach these students.

As I was talking to them, another individual I knew approached me and tried to have conversation with me. Luckily, Zach was able to talk to him while allowing me to continue to talk to the Chinese students. In the middle of the conversation I was having with them, the individual that just approached us all of a sudden said, "You guys need Jesus, you need to repent, and accept Him now." It was kind of awkward and intrusive. However, luckily the students couldn't really understand what He was saying, but it gave me an awesome opportunity to transition into a spiritual conversation. I was able to ask the students about their spiritual backgrounds. I eventually was able to share my testimony with them and share the whole gospel with them! It was really excited. The students seemed interested in learning more about spiritual things, and even more so, I was able to connect with them on other things as well. I found out that they like to play basketball every evening from 8 to 11, and they usually at lunch together every day. So I exchanged contact information with them agreed to meet with them the next day.

The next day I woke up extremely exhausted. I had to cancel a couple of appointments I had in the morning so that I could sleep in a little. But one thing I was looking forward to was having lunch with my new friends. I called one of my friends after class to see if he was still down to have lunch. We ended up meeting in front of the MU and going to the cafeteria together. I was so excited to meet up with my new friends again. Just a week before, I had told my discipleship leader how frustrated I was about my inability to go out and share. That day, we went out and shared on campus. I wanted to go speak to an international student, and we ended up running into one. We shared with him and got his information, but when I tried to email him later, I realized that his email address didn't exist. It was very disheartening. So the fact, that I was able to meet up with these new friends this time was super encouraging to me.

When we got to the restaurant we met up with two other Chinese students. One of them was a guy I met from the day before, and another was a new student. We sat together and got to know each other a little bit. They asked me about my major. I told them about how I was a Religious Studies major and how I was involved with churches. As I was talking about some of my experience with church, one of the new students asked me if there were any churches around. I told him that I knew of some Chinese churches. The student said that he was not interested in Chinese church but more so other churches.

This question really got my attention and made me excited. I explained to them about how I saw church as group of people who come together and study and learn about Jesus. I told them that church is when anybody comes together to learn about Jesus and asked them if they would like to start a church together and study the Bible together. They all agreed and seemed pretty excited about the opportunity. We agreed to meet on Saturday to study the Bible together! I also invited them to hang out with us on Friday and check out a spoken word and dance show.

On Friday, they came and hang out with us and had a good time being with other American students. Then the next day, I met up again with them in the afternoon to study the Bible. I bought some desserts, and we met up in Danforth chapel to talk about the Bible. A couple of the student showed up a little late because they had just come back from the mall but everything came together nicely. It was really cool too because my friend Lydia just happened to pass by, and she was able to join us in the Bible study too.

We walked through the study together and read Luke 10:25-37. It was the story about the Good Samaritan. It was crazy because this was probably one of the first times these students had ever held, opened, and read from the Bible! We read the passage together. It was really hard at first because I was really trying to find out where they were coming from culturally. We were studying things together that they were hearing for the very first time. However, as we met I definitely could sense that the Holy Spirit was in our midst guiding the meeting. The Chinese students were very insightful and asked a lot of good questions. We went through the study and Lydia and I once again were able to explain the gospel to them once again.

It was really amazing to hear some of the questions and insight they students had. They really were able to grasp the Bible at a certain level that many Americans even myself tend to miss out. One of the most powerful moments I experienced was a comment that one of the students had. He was commenting on the way that levite and the priest passed by the man on the road while the Samaritan helped him. He couldn't understand how churchgoers like the levite and the priest could ignore the man who needed help while and enemy like the Samaritan chose to help out. We were talking about how Jesus' most important thing was that we must love God and love others. In response to this lesson and the situation of the priest and levite, the Chinese student said this, "Maybe the churchgoers understood what it meant to love God, but they didn't understand what it meant to love their neighbors." It was such a simple statement, but it was so powerful because it convicted my heart and spoke to the process God has been working in my heart the past few weeks. Even as I type it now, chills run down my spine. Here I am as a supposedly "super-spiritual" person, and yet a Chinese student reading the Bible for the first time caught on to an important principle that I am still struggling with until this day.

I was able to use that comment to share with them the struggles I had with that very issue, and I got to share a dream I had last summer that spoke to that very issue. But it was so amazing to see their curiosity and insight. They definitely had an amazing grasp and hunger for the scriptures that I have not witnessed too often. It was super exciting!!!

To make things even cooler. I texted Lydia a little later, and I found out that she was really impacted by the whole situation as well. She was struggling with God over some things earlier but coming and explaining the Gospel to the students really opened her eyes to the true meaning of the Gospel for herself! It was so encouraging here her speak to the Chinese students because she was explaining the Gospel to them in such a unique way! It was soo awesome!! And to think, that she might be going to East Asia this summer too! So cool to see what God is doing!

So ya, I'm super excited to see what God is doing in our midst. He has opened up so many doors by just being faithful and taking an initiative. Successful evangelism is taking the initiative in the Holy Spirit and leaving the results up to God! Amen for that! Jesus showed up big time for us this past week! It has been so crazy and encouraging. Keep these Chinese students in your prayers!

I have so much more to write but I'm growing weary, and I'm heading on spring break trip in a few hours. I need to write about our crazy encounter with Japanese students, South Korean and North Korean students, and our crazy Epic run-in at a spoken word show that opened our eyes to our unique diversity and differences. I have been learning so much about God's heart for restoring the church and recognizing it's diversity. I've even had some insight into my calling and testimony is seeing the Church restored. So much good stuff, and only more and more to come! Yay God!