story time! part 1

Chapter 1

When we were dividing up our students into small groups in a planning meeting, the team said “She might not want to have anything to do with ‘small groups,’ but we at least should ask her.”

We did ask her, and a year and a half later, she’s only missed 3 small groups-- and we’ve met every week since August of ’08.

In December of this last semester, we gave her a journal that had a daily scripture, and we would meet every week to discuss verses we had questions about or verses we liked, or anything. Without fail, she always read her verses, and always had questions.

Now she is reading “A Case for Christ” because someone recommended it to her, and even though some of her questions are unbelievably hard (and creative), she keeps going. She continues to come to small group without fail. She’s on the student leadership team, so she helps cook and clean and write skits and translate talks.

But she isn’t a Christian. She doesn’t think she can believe. She believes that it’s the best way to live, but she can’t bring herself to believe in God or Jesus, even though she acts more Christ-like than a lot of us Christians do sometimes.

Praying is all we can do. We are reading the Word with her, we are challenging her, we are loving her. God is the one that has to capture her heart. Not En Vivo and not her friends in the ministry and not the lifestyle, but God.

(those are pancakes...)

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Chapter 2

We met this girl about a year and a half ago. She first came to En Vivo cause she wanted to learn English. But she quickly became friends with some of our exchange students, and began to come to all of our events and even came to our retreat.

On that retreat she expressed to us how much it meant to her that we respected her as a woman and accepted her unconditionally.

Since then, she’s begun to help us cook meals and dinners for events, help raise money for our fundraisers, organize group dinners, and so much more. She’s always willing to help, and...

Well, she’s Muslim. She makes it very clear to us that she is. But just in the past month, she decided that she wanted to read a Christian book, Blue Like Jazz with me and 2 other girls in the ministry, girls that are already Christians.

She wanted to read about Christianity without reading the Bible.

So imagine that, a Muslim girl, in a small group with 3 other Christian girls talking about God and faith and culture and forgiveness and love. It’s been amazing.

I want her to read the Bible next, to read the words of Jesus, but if Blue Like Jazz is a stepping stone to get her talking and more comfortable, we’ll take it! If you’ve read this book and have any extra insight on it, let me know. She’s really enjoying it, and we’re praying for her all the time.

To top it all off, we went to dinner on Friday, and she prayed for our meal.

God is good and God is cool.

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