I was very sluggish getting dressed Friday morning. It was a personal struggle to put each leg into my jeans, and to stand up to put on my shirt. I was feeling so run-down, like I had for most mornings in the past couple weeks. As the mornings passed, my spirits would normally pick up and I’d be more my cheery self, but the circumstances causing my morning gloom would remain. My roommate and I had seen such little fruit over the past few weeks. We were sharing like crazy and not seeing anyone make a decision to follow dad. We were pouring every bit of our energy into the work but just not seeing any headway get made. As I struggled to get ready for our appointment for lunch, I worried about how it would go. Would our friends who had recently become Christians stick with it? Or would this be another meeting where someone would be telling us they weren’t sure anymore. I wondered if we were doing anything really worthwhile, and I asked myself “why the heck would I want to do this for another five years? What was I thinking?”
About an hour later, we met our friend, Shawn, at the little north gate, and he told us when we found someplace to eat, our other friend, Churchill, would meet us there. As the four of us sat and talked, Churchill began to tell me about the importance of having faith, and told me about how he had been reading a lot in the Bible, whenever he got a chance! Shawn was not much different. After lunch we started digging in to the lesson about sharing we were going over that day, and they were all about it! Churchill talked about telling his mom about becoming a Christian, and Shawn told us about how he had shared with his roommates! God was doing some serious work with these guys, and it was amazing! They just got everything we were telling them, and not only that, they started preaching to us about sharing the good news!
The next day we met with our friend Lou. He had become a Christian about a month and a half ago, but he went to another campus and it was difficult to meet with him. We had planned to talk to him about getting dunked that day, but we were ready to address any doubt he had started to have or whatever else. As we started to catch up, he told us about how after we had hung out with him and his roommates the last time, he had shared the good news with them! Then as were going through the dunking lesson, we asked him one of the questions on the sheet which asked “will you continue to follow Jesus, even if your family doesn’t approve?” and he responded with a quick yes. I delved deeper and asked him “if your parents tell you that you can’t follow Jesus, what will you do?” He replied saying “Well I’ll explain it to them, but I’m an adult now so it doesn’t matter” Bam!! Then we asked him if he wanted to get dunked today and he said YES!!! He even said that he thought he should when we first started the lesson! This guy was getting it too!
After he went home, and I was getting ready to go to bed later that night, I started to reflect on my past couple of days. And I thought to myself THIS. This is what I was thinking when I decided to come back long-term. This is what it is about. Even if there are dry spells, even if there are times when I have to push myself to get dressed in the morning, days like those two days are what make it all worth it.