Thursday, October 8, 2009

Day 8 - Fumana High School

I went to the location for the movie "District 9" today.
Cool huh?

Today started at 5am. We crammed 8 people in a 5 seat car today. And drove for almost 2 hrs. Interesting start to an already early morning! We arrived at Fumana High School (expected 2600 students) and began sound checking and preparing for the morning. Around 8am, we got news that the school was holding standardized exams in the room right next to the stage and we could not continue the Hopefest until 1pm (school releases at 2pm) or go from 8:30am - 10am. Bad news. Our now 5 hr. program was being cut to 1.5 hr. We decided quickly to start at 8:30 and go until 10. We began the program, trying our best to condense it too fit in as much as we could and still give an altar call/commitment time. Stressful to say the least. Around 9am, we got word that the school was going to let us continue on with the Hopefest until 2. Great news. We had to take a break from 9-11 to give the exams time to finish. We thanked God for His plan being better than ours. The program continued at 11, the students however were unfocused. As you could imagine 2600 students in 80 deg. sunny weather doesn't work too well to pay attention for that amount of time. Micah and a few other volunteers and I posted ourselves around the students and began to pray and ask God that they open their hearts to the message of salvation being given. When Cyrus gave the altar call, around maybe 90 students came to the front and by the end around 300 students were standing in front receiving new life. Kids were pouring from the sides of the buildings and coming to the front. At the end of the day, around 340 students came to know Christ and commit to a life of purity/abstinence. When I saw this from the stage, tears came to my eyes. I realized that God did not need our program to work miracles. He doesn't need us to lead worship. We have the privilege of taking part in His work. And for that I was thankful. Tomorrow is our last Hopefest. I can't wait to see what God does.

keep praying.

-john

2 comments:

  1. John...this is awesome...it's amazing how God's hand work even when situation "appear" to be heading the wrong direction...thanks for increasing the number of God's children...the Bestrom's

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  2. Hey John...let me know what time your flight comes in on Tuesday, please :)
    Looking forward to seeing you - love Mom

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