Making progress towards the goal!

Our team's long term goal is that by five years from now there will no longer be a need for American staff workers to come to Tilburg anymore, because the ministry here will be completely sustained by Dutch staff workers and student volunteers.  

While on campus yesterday, I had the opportunity to conduct survey's with a Dutch student named Gijs (pronounced hice).  He's a great guy and he is really wanting to share his faith with his peers on campus!  I lead the first conversation, which didn't amount to any interest.  So then it was Gijs' turn to lead; something he'd never done before!  

A picture of Gijs!

We went up to 3 different people who all told him they weren't interested in talking to us, and I could tell he was getting a little flustered.  After a small suggestion, he initiated another conversation with a dutch student named, Carl.  Carl said he would do our survey, and so we took our seats.  After chatting with him for a bit, he told us that he hadn't felt completely free since his mother died a few years ago.  And that as a result of her suffering he didn't believe in God anymore.  We told him that we had found complete freedom before and that it is found in Christ.  And that we would love to share more about that with him if he wanted us to.

I could tell that Carl was deeply moved by our offer, and he said he was going to consider taking us up on it!!!  We gave him our contact information and now you and I get to pray that he follows through.

Even if we never that great conversation with Carl, the step that Gijs took yesterday was very significant!  We often quote Bill Bright and say that "success in evangelism is by faith taking the initiative in the power of the Holy Spirit to share the Gospel, and leaving the results up to God."  Gijs did exactly that in his four times today.  Three times people said no, and one said yes, but even if he got 12 no's he still would have been successful.

It is also really exciting for me to see Gijs step out in faith like he did, because he was the first male student at Tilburg University to do that.  We are hoping and praying that he is just the beginning.  And that soon we will have more and more students sharing their faith, giving Jesus more notoriety and hopefully a second thought from these spiritually apathetic students.