Steps of Faith

Thank you for your prayers! God is moving in the hearts of students on our team and in New York. The following is an update that one of the girls I am discipling during the project wrote and posted for her friend on facebook about her first week here. She did such a great job explaining, I thought you would enjoy it as well.

"Greetings from the Big Apple!

The past week has been a whirlwind! Our team of 19 students and 9 staff has been doing so much since we arrived in NYC last Tuesday. The first several days, we focused on training for campus evangelism, getting acclimated to city life (especially learning to navigate the subway system!), building community with the other students on project, and PRAYING! Last weekend, we got to explore the city and do some sight-seeing, including the Statue of Liberty, the Museum of Modern Art, the Rockefeller Center, Coney Island, and Time Square. This place is bigger and busier than I ever imagined possible! The people in the city are unbelievably diverse and I’m just beginning to realize what its like to be so far from the Bible belt!

On Sunday afternoon, we hosted a party for international students from nearby colleges, and had about 30 students show up. We had a great time helping them practice their English, and we were paired up with an “International Buddy” who we will be meeting and hanging out with every Friday for rest of project. They love to have American friends who can help them learn more about our national culture, and they also love that for once they know more about this city than someone else and can show US around! Some of these students are Christians, others are not. I’m not sure what my “Buddy” believes, but I am excited to spend quality time with her and build a relationship with her this summer!

On Monday, we visited campuses for the first time. We had been trained on how to “decode” a campus: find key people, places, and resources on campus that would help us get to know the subculture and spiritual atmosphere of a campus so that we can know what kind of approach to ministry will be most effective. My Ministry Team of four other students and 2 staff went to Brooklyn College, where we will be spending every Monday and Wednesday. It was an adventurous day! We actually had to sneak through the front gates of campus, since we didn’t have student ID cards to show the security guard…but he didn’t stop us (all looking occupied on cell phones!), so getting in was the first answer to prayer!

We spent the first hour that morning Prayer Walking: getting to know the layout of the campus, visiting buildings that were open, and praying for specific requests for the campus as we went. I was prayer-walking with my friend, Katie, and we prayed for 3 specific things: that the Lord would send us a faculty member who could tell us more about campus life and be a good resource for us in the future; that we could get our hands on media materials like a map of campus, brochures on academic programs, a list of student organizations, a student newspaper, or anything else that would be an authentic way to get to know Brooklyn College; and finally, that God would connect us with at least one Christian student there who could come alongside us to reach his/her campus for Christ. God answered all of these!!! We got connected with the advisor of all of the school’s student leadership programs and clubs, who gave us an enormous stack of all the media materials we could want—after he gave us a personal tour of the student center and talked with us for over an hour about what life is like at Brooklyn. Finally, two guys on my team met a girl wearing a “Got God?” t-shirt who was a sincere follower of Christ and gave them her contact information so that she could re-connect with us in the future! Wow, God!

On Tuesday, my ministry team went to St. Francis College in Brooklyn. We didn’t have any luck getting past the security at the front desk of the main building, so we walked around the block several times, praying for future opportunities to get in, and praying for ways to reach students from the outside. We ended up having some really great conversations with students sitting right outside on benches during their breaks between classes. We even got to share the gospel through conversation with one lady, but then she had to leave quickly. We learned a lot about the school just through talking to people, and we also got contact information for someone who may be able to give us a tour when we return next week.

On Wednesday, we went back to Brooklyn College and spent the day sharing one of Campus Crusade’s best evangelistic resources, the Quest Survey. This 6-question survey asks students questions about what their religious background was like and how they felt about it, how they now describe themselves spiritually, and finally asks them to rate on a scale of 1-10 their desire to know God more. My partner, Becca, and I talked to one girl, who is an atheist and was not terribly open to even an idea of a Creator God, but she shared a lot with us and we went through a booklet on the Four Spiritual Laws of the gospel with her. We left it with her “as a future resource on what the Bible says is true about God.” We are praying that the scripture and message of Christ in that booklet may be something she will look through again and continue to think about. A male student from Turkey then sat down on the bench beside us and struck up a conversation, so we ended up going through the survey with him. He comes from a strict Muslim background, but is completely open to new perspectives on religion. He says he is currently seeking Truth and knows that there is a God who must care something about us. We went through the booklet with him, too, and he was pretty open to the Gospel message. He didn’t agree that Jesus was the Son of God, but he did enjoy discussing with us what we believe and why. Last, we talked to a student who told us her husband is a practicing Jew, but she currently does not believe in a god. As we asked her questions about her claims on evolution, she said in bewildered laughter that she “can’t explain where the algae came from!” We share the gospel booklet with her too, and as she was leaving, she thanked us for our questions—she realized that she gets angry when people believe things without being about to explain why, but she does the very same thing! She said she really wants to explore evolution more and the concept of a Creator. We were blown away.

Please be praying for all of these people we have met and talked to, for the ones who have now heard the gospel and may be ready to believe it, or may just be considering the possibility of a God for the first time—that’s huge too! The other 18 students here on project have many similar stories; one group even led a Taiwanese student at Polytech to accept Christ today!

While God is renewing our hearts “day by day” ( 2 Corinthians 4:16), our bodies are getting quite tired…we do a lot of walking and not much sleeping. I have been feeling a little bit sick today, so please pray that we all will be able to stay healthy and physically energized for the busyness of each day! Pray also for the continued peace among the community of Christians here. It has been an indescribable blessing. I am learning so much about life and ministry from the staff and students here. And also, please pray for God to go ahead of us to prepare the hearts of students to be receptive to hearing about His love and grace!

I so appreciate your prayers! I have been praying for you all too, update me on YOUR lives!!!

I love each of you with the love of Christ,
Sammi Quave"

P.S. The student that prayed to receive Christ was at my ministry teams "home" campus. During our subway ride to the campus I asked our team what it looked like to take a step of faith in evangelism today. The two students who shared with our new Taiwanese brother were acting out of their commitment to take their steps of faith and God honored it through bringing a new child to Him. Friday Alex, one of the students who shared with him will be meeting for the first follow up. Please pray for protection from spiritual attack now that he has accepted Christ. Pray that we will be able to reconnect with him and connect him with believing students at his school.