First day in Schools

day one of school ministry down, four more to go! beka and i spoke to 3 schools and the group spoke to 9 total. several groups were majorly late arriving to schools but praise God none of the schools decided to cancel :-) this was a good first day and good practice for the rest of the week. the first two schools we spoke at were Christian schools and one was an elementary school, so we didn't really hit the Hell-fire and brimstone part of the message i usually get so into lol. the third school was great though, it was a public high school with about 300 students who all listened incredibly intently to the gospel, even the 10-15 muslims who were there! however, i am noticing a few things about this culture that are very different than other places that i've ministered. it is usually almost impossible to keep people from raising their hand at the end of the message that they want to receive Christ as their lord and savior, but here in Nairobi only about 10-15% of the people have been raising their hand at the end. the entire crowd is listening just as intently and you can see in their faces that they know they have sinned against God and deserve to go to Hell. but for some reason they just seem hesitant to make a public profession of faith. we would all much rather see 30 people genuinely give their lives to Christ than 300 just raise their hands and not mean anything by it. but we will continue to pray for guidance as to how we can better reach these people. we need to hammer Mark 8:38 "if you are ashamed of me on earth, i will be ashamed of you when i get back" and hope it speaks to their hearts... i am going to 4 schools tomorrow in the same neighborhood that i will be leading a crusade on friday. these schools sound like they are significantly larger than the schools we spoke in today. i should be giving the gospel to almost 2000 people tomorrow! so please continue to pray that God will open up doors and hearts to the gospel. and also pray that we can more effectively show these people that eternal salvation doesn't rest on merely being a "Christian," but rather on a deep personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the decision to turn from your sin and to give your life, trust, and faith to Christ alone. thanks!

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell