Evangelism Explosion for 3/28/06

Vicki dropped me at Church last night for EE. It looked like rain was imminent – but it never did to my knowledge – and that we were going to be sparse on folks, but they finally began showing up just after 5:30 p.m. I was prepared to cover for Dot, but she was one of the group who came in late. She said that she and Tag had gotten home from Pittsburgh about 4:00 p.m. I asked her and she said that their son, Dr. Clark Gamblin, is at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center/Hospital. I overheard her saying something about Carlyle/Carlisle, PA too – but I’m not sure what that was about – I didn’t ask.

For the second week in a row, William was absent. I suppose that he’s dropped out in order to begin his spring camping trips. He had told me that the reason he stopped doing EE was that it interfered with him being able to go camping – something he loves to do. However, in my view, EE is much more important.

Rick, my team leader, was there last night again. Ronnie split us up, though and used both of us as “floater” people. I wound up with Richard and Betty and we went out to a trailer park off of Greenfield Road in Brandon and did several questionnaire visits. I think we did like 4 visits and found that each person turned out to be a Christian, but we were able to ask the diagnostic questions and to the second question we got surprising answers. Richard was able to probe a little more and find out whether or not they had ever made a profession of faith and accepted Christ as their Savior and Lord. When we left the trailer park, we got about a mile down the road and Richard realized that he was missing his portfolio he had been carrying. I remembered that he had brought it with him on one of our stops in the park; we turned around and went back and went to the second street we had been on. As we were driving by, I spotted it on the porch of one of the trailers we had visited at, so he hopped out, went up and retrieved it. Then we left the park a second time and made our way back to Church. The report back session was already in progress.

Here’s Dot’s report…

Dear Friends,

Evangelism Explosion is reaching such an exciting time in the semester!

The trainees have just about mastered the required memory work and are taking a very active part now in the presentation of the Gospel. Each week from now on, it will become more and more natural for them. They are certainly getting caught up in the joy of it all. As Bob Waller said to me tonight, " I just LOVE to go fishing!"....and I agree with him 100%.

Tonight we had 12 professions of faith!

Bob Waller, Chris Ball and Karen Ball led a young mother of three to Jesus tonight.

Vic Holsapple and Guy Reedy led a 50 yr old Catholic man to Jesus.

My team (Jan Boteler and Don Goss) led a 29 yr old, single, Catholic guy to Jesus.

Terri Wissel and Rick Olson, and Jamie Butler led a family of 9 in the UMC waiting room to Jesus!

The other teams had some very important appointments tonight as well. The Gospel was shared many times, and many people were drawn closer to our Lord. Those visits are so very important too because often it takes several spiritual conversations with someone before they are ready to pray to receive Christ. Each link in the chain of events leading to a profession of faith is very important.

We are so proud of our trainees. They are so faithful to study and do their homework and are doing very well ! God has blessed us this semester, and we are so very thankful.

Ronnie Falvey and Vic Holsapple are wonderful leaders for Evangelism Explosion. They love this ministry and their enthusiasm is contagious!

Thanks for being faithful prayer partners for us. Prayer gets for EE what only God can do.

" God blesses those who obey him: happy the man who puts his trust in the Lord."

Prov. 16:20

With His love,

Dot

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According to my count, we’re now at 47 for the total number of professions of faith. Of course, EE isn’t just about numbers – as Ronnie put it last night, “that’s icing on the cake”. Instead, EE is about training people to go out and share their faith.

In the trainer session, Ronnie went over chapter one with us in the textbook by Dr. D. James Kennedy – founder of EE. I took notes as to what he had to say, but I didn’t bring them with me this morning or I would share with you 4 things Ronnie said give us confidence in the reliability of the Bible. Maybe I’ll grab my notebook at lunch and I can list them after that. He gave us a homework assignment – to read another chapter – he doesn’t have us studying each chapter, but instead we’re skipping around – and note what the chapter says to us. I’ll try to get that done over the next few days – before EE next week.

Betty dropped me off at Sterling – around 9:30 p.m. We found that we have common ties to Louisiana. Her mother was born in Hammond, although she didn’t really live there for a long period of time. Somehow she wound up in Clinton and met and married Betty’s father. I was told that her parents have been married for 58 years – yesterday was their anniversary. J J

When I got up to my apartment, Sukiey was on the couch waiting for me. I put some canned food down for her and moved her bowls like Michele suggested, but Sukiey didn’t like that, so I moved them back, and I eventually figured out (this morning) that she didn’t like the canned food I put down either. I put a different type of canned food down this morning and I saw that she did eat some of it – I’ll find out when I get a chance to go home – either at lunch or tonight after work – whether she ate any more of it and likes it or what. I’m just trying to give the cat some variety instead of the same thing all the time.

This morning I was leaving out to come to work and as I did, I was talking to Sukiey. When I stepped out and closed the door, I saw Harold – an older guy who lives down the hall – standing at the elevator. He observed “so you talk to your cat too?!” and I said yes. He said that he talks to his (he has 2) and that he thinks they understand him most of the time. While waiting for the elevator, I walked around to the landing dumpster and tossed the empty container of Tidy Cat in. Speaking of Tidy Cat, I got a response from them about the comment I e-mailed them a couple of days ago. They thanked me and said they are sending me some coupons for Tidy Cat products.