Thanks for your prayers for this meeting. Though I do not have a final report from the leaders of the conference, more than 50 people indicated that they believed God was calling them to give their lives to cross-cultural evangelism and church planting. Several from our church spoke with me and other adults about their sense of being called. One recent high school graduate put it like this, “I do not want to waste my life!” Another told my wife that she now believes that the reason she is pursuing an education degree is so that she can go to “some hard place where Jesus is not known and try to make Him known.” That is language that we regularly use in our church–both in preaching and teaching as well as in our praying–that God will call many from among us to go to some hard place to live and die in order to make Jesus known.
The last 5 days have seen some real difficulties and trials with some of our youth during the conference. Some of these were never-before-experienced-kinds-of-challenges. One of our men astutely observed last night that in praying for and calling for our youth to be thrust into the harvest fields we were inviting the assaults of hell and should not be surprised at the resultant spiritual battles. I think he is right. In addition to those who are seeking further counsel to sort out a call to go to unreached people groups, one of our young ladies professed faith in Christ.
In a previous post I mentioned “To Every Tribe Ministries” but did not give their website address. My friend, John Divito, sent it to me. Find out more about them at: www.toeverytribe.com.