Chicago Day 3

I can't even express how tired I am at this point! We left this morning around 8:30am and got finished (after our de-briefing) close to 10pm. But what a day it has been... full of many divine opportunities and new experiences. We met with the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church this morning to learn more about his experience with church planting and the ministry at his church. We then went over to the campus of UIC to engage students and pass out flyers for Immanuel Church. The goal was to get as many into the hands of the students to let them know there is a church nearby. I got my first "talk to the hand" today... boy was that heartbreaking, but I was able to chat with a few other students who were willing to hear about Immanuel Baptist Church and expressed some interest. It was very intimidating to be on a college campus of 25,000 students. It was pretty evident when classes let out because piles of people flooded out of the buildings at the same time and would nearly trample you if you got in the way. Some people saw me handing out flyers and intentionally went the other direction. Others totally ignored my efforts, and then there were some who took the flyer and read it. Unfortunately, there were also some who took the flyer and immediately trashed it. Our team split up to try to cover large sections of the campus and then we met back up at lunch in the UIC student center. Chuck and I sat at a table with a guy and chatted with him until he had to get to class. He (Mike) is a new student in his first semester and basically has never been to church or heard the gospel. He said he was baptized as an infant and he nor his family hasn't been to church since. Chuck gave him the condensed "10 minute" version of the gospel so he could get to class. He also gave him his email address and asked that he contact him if he wanted to talk or had questions. Several of our team members had similar stories today. Our plans were to go over to Loyola University this afternoon but we had to change plans. One of the guys on the trip with us (Dave) got a call last night that his brother-in-law had passed away. Dave is planning on planting a church here next year and we were going to help him with some survey work in a particular area later this week. Because he was going to fly back home to be with his wife, we chose to do the surveys today and will go to Loyola another day. Pray for Dave and his wife during this difficult time and as they minister to their unsaved family members. So, speaking of the surveys... we took the l-train over to an area called North Center to explore and basically scout out the people there. We were again split into small teams to cover city blocks. Our goal... ask business owners and residents what the community is like, what their needs are, how long they'd lived there, etc. What our group found... well, we were on a block that was entirely residential so we tried to speak to any individuals we encountered on the street. We did meet a few but the most memorable by far was an older gentleman named Herman who is a professing atheist! He was very skeptical of us at first but slowly began to open up. He was out on his afternoon walk about a mile from his home (or so he said). Chuck began questioning him and said we could walk with him. Nearly an hour later we were far away from our "assigned block" and we were tired, but Herman heard the gospel today! He wasn't very accepting but I believe he walked away thinking about what he had just heard! Pray that Herman would desire a relationship with Christ and place his hope and trust in Him.

Sharing with Herman