September 2001    

 

 

Dear Saints,

 

This past summer we were privileged to attend three youth camps, two of which I preached at, while Aaron and Gabrielle also attended two other kid's crusades. 

 

I was able to find time to comply with all of the requirements for Pacific Garden Mission’s “Unshackled” program.  They told me that the final determination for production takes up to three months, as they have to check out my references.  Pray that they decide to produce it!! 

 

I also took the time to add a lot of content to my web site.  Before this summer all I had was a web page at www.thecampusministry.org.  Thanks to brother Alan Bunning for tutoring me for a day and a half on how to manage a web site.

 

In August, I inaugurated my 19^th consecutive year of campus evangelism with Brother Donnie Morris from Wrightsville, Ga.  Brother Donnie took several days off from his job and drove up to Evansville, In. in order to preach with me at Vincennes University and the University of Evansville.  He told me that he just wanted to watch and listen to me preach so that he could learn, and learn he did.  We only preached together for two days, due to Sister Bonnie and I having to prepare for our Alaska trip, the next day Brother Donnie set out for the University of Louisville, Ky. 

 

At mid afternoon Brother Donnie calls me from cloud nine as he had just gathered and held his first crowd of around one hundred and twenty students for about an hour and a half.  He was elated as he told me how that the students water gunned him twice and ripped every page out of his Bible.  His exact words were, “It was great!”  I asked him, “you did not make the mistake of loaning your Bible to a nice, kind, polite, and loving student did you?”  To which he admittedly said, “yes.”  I jokingly told him, “Brother Donnie, one of the cardinal rules of campus preaching is to never, never, never ever give your Bible to some teary eyed, pseudo compassioned student who just wants to look up something!”  Furthermore, I told him, “that after one or two destroyed Bibles he will learn his lesson.”  Brother Donnie went on to Virginia in order to preach with Brother Matt Bourgault and had a great time.  The simple fact, that, Brother Donnie could still love the students, which abused him, was all the proof that I needed to know, that indeed, God had called him to this work.

 

I truly thank the Lord Jesus Christ for calling three other men of like-mindedness to the work of campus evangelism.  I never dreamed that I would see this day of four holiness living and preaching campus evangelists.

 

Alaska, the forty ninth state, how prophetic, as it was my forty ninth state to preach in.  Leaving Aaron and Gabrielle with my mother, Sister Bonnie and I embarked on a seventeen day trip to Alaska.

 

We preached on two campuses, the University of Alaska at Anchorage and at Fairbanks.  Anchorage is a smaller campus with a large commuting student body.  Our largest crowd was around seventy-five students as the weather was much colder than it was in Fairbanks.  At Anchorage, God opened up other avenues of evangelism.  The first one was a fifteen minute recorded interview on the campus radio station 88.1 FM, and the other, a two hour and twenty minute, live, interview talk show on “Alaska’s New Rock Alternative” 87.7 FM.  This was one of these highly perverted, blasphemous, head banging rock stations.  Sister Bonnie accompanied me that morning and by the end of the program, the disk jockeys were totally under conviction and could not wait for that day’s conclusion.

 

At Fairbanks, we enjoyed temperatures in the low sixties, and larger crowds of several hundred students.  At Fairbanks, a campus newspaper reporter interviewed me, as well as, the editor.  That Wednesday, the day after 9-11, when the Muslim terrorists high jacked and attacked the United States in the lower forty-eight, a Muslim woman was most vociferous for her Allah.  The crowd grew quiet and stared at her.  I could feel the tensions rise as I actually felt that her safety was in the balance.  I decimated the Islamic religion by reading from a Quran that a student brought to me in mocking defiance of my stated knowledge thereof.  I quickly diverted the crowd’s attention from the foolish Mohammedan to some other topic, as her diatribe was just too much, too soon.

 

We thank you for your love and prayers.

 

Brother Jim, Sister Bonnie, Aaron, Gabrielle