Last Chance

This weekend I got the chance to witness to one of my co-workers. I had previously talked to him about my beliefs about a month before, and thought it was a good time to continue with the discussion. It was the last night I was going to work with him, and I felt like it was my responsibility to talk to him about it one last time.

He told me that he was an atheist, but that he used to be a Christian when he was younger because he was raised as one. I tried explaining to him that being a true Christian meant you had accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. Being a very stubborn person, he decided to "gently" tell me that I was stupid for believing such a thing.

Feeling discouraged and at a loss for words, I quietly sat there and listened to him argue with everything I had said. Here's just a few of the comments he had for me:

I can't trust anyone but myself, so why believe in a higher power?

God didn't just show up out of no where and create the entire universe.

There's no point to life, really. Nothing happens after we die anyway.

If I was a Christian I would be unhappy.

The Bible isn't exactly a text book.

....Well, needless to say, I was a bit frustrated. I tried one last time to convince him of the life-changing news. Unfortunately, nothing I said registered the right way in his mind. I guess that's how it works sometimes. I can only hope and pray that someday what I said might come up again. Maybe he'll realize what he's missing out on. Maybe the only thing I was supposed to do was plant the seed.

Camp CCC

Last Thursday and Friday our church had an overnight Vacation Bible School thing for 4th through 6th graders. We were there from 1:00PM Thursday to 11:00AM Friday. As a "head cabin leader" I was in charge of 4 girl campers and a "junior cabin leader." Three of our girls were 6th graders and one of our girls was a 4th grader. When my campers first arrived to the church they seemed low key and quiet...but then we got back to our "cabin" (aka, a small room in the way WAY back of the church building). They went ballistic and got all excited about how they were going to decorate the room, ding-dong ditch the boys' rooms later, and stay up all night. Then the girls in the cabin next to us made it to their room, and apparently my girls were not the best of friends with them. Once they saw who was in the neighboring room they started plotting ways to annoy them and keep them up the entire night. As you can imagine, I was just a little nervous about what the next 22 hours would bring.

During the opening of camp, Pastor Sam showed the "Camp CCC rules video." One of the rules was "Always stay with your cabin leader." While that rule was being explained, two of the girls started giggling and whispering about how that was not going to happen. (Not real comforting, right?) Then after the video, Sam explained how lights out was at 11:00. Being naive, I thought the girls would be happy with such a "late" bedtime for their age...and boy, was I wrong. Right after Sam said lights out was at 11:00 the oldest girl said, "Pssht, yeah right." Uh-oh....

Being a leader to younger girls is always a bit scary at first. In order to have a good relationship with the kids, they have to like you. And if you don't always let them do what they want, that's not easy. When the girls asked me if they could ding-dong ditch the boys' rooms and I told them no, they were disappointed, but luckily for me they quickly got over it and moved on to other things. As young, energetic girls they were not stuck on one thing for more than 5 or 10 minutes. Fortunately, as the night progressed the girls seemed more interested in opening up and talking to me. My assumptions that these kids were completely crazy and wouldn't want to have anything to do with me was dead wrong. The more time we spent together, the more fun we had. My fear and worry of spending an entire night with these loud girls turned into excitement and eagerness.

During devotions we began to discuss salvation and how people become Christians. When I went around the circle and asked each girl if they were Christians and how they knew for sure, one of them responded with this: "Well I'm a Christian because I asked Jesus into my heart AND I got baptized a couple years ago." After that comment I had the opportunity to explain to her why baptism doesn't do anything to secure your spot in Heaven. At first she seemed very confused, but then after I told her all she needed was Jesus in her heart (which she had), she seemed relieved and shot me a cute smile.

Sometimes when I don't get the chance to witness to a non-believer at occasions like this, I get disappointed, and that's very stupid of me. I should be happy with simply getting to talk to these girls and be ready to help them learn more about their faith in Jesus. It also makes me realize that there's probably several people that I see throughout the week that need salvation. Whether I know them or not, they need to know about Jesus and what He did for them. Yeah, it's a scary thought, witnessing to people. But come on, we need to get over our own selfish fears. Believe me, I'm not saying I've gone pro at it yet, but I'm beginning to realize how many opportunities God slaps right in front of our faces. It's something to think about and work on.

Thanks for reading! Keep checking back in for more posts to come!