Worldview Academy: Wednesday (Part 2)

If you did not see part 1, here is the link to that. :) http://simba-lionsden.blogspot.com/2013/06/worldview-academy-wednesday-part-1.html

After waking up from my lovely nap, I took a quick shower and got ready to go to our evangelism training. I figured it would be really similar to last year, but I was wrong. The tract was entirely different! I like this one much better than last years though. We watched a video explaining how to use the tract and then were given some basic rules to follow. Wave one, which I was a part of, was dismissed outside to get grouped into our evangelising groups. Evangelising groups consist of three people, either two girls and one boy or vice versa. Two small groups join together to make the groups. Mine was with Griffin's small group. (That is his last name, for anyone who was wondering.) Sarah D. and I were together with a boy named Caleb. It was his third year at WVA and was really quiet and kind of hard to talk to. We loaded up onto our buses and began our journey to a nearby farmer's market. All of our group was really hungry because we did not get to eat before we left. We were supposed to practice on the bus on the way to evangelising, but my group was praying all the way there and talking with other groups. You know you're a homeschooler when, you have no idea how to not slide off a school bus seat when it turns. :) Sarah could not stop laughing every time we turned because I would slide right off of the seat. Christa came back and made sure our group didn't have any questions or concerns before going out. Sarah G., Grace, and I were the only three in our group who had ever gone out evangelising before, so most of our group was a little nervous. I was terrified last year, but I was pretty calm this year, knowing basically what to expect. The tracts were scripts we could follow if we went blank, and staff were going to be out there with us if we ever needed help. This is incredibly comforting. When we got there, we had to walk a little ways to get to the farmer's market, but it was not bad, and there were staff at all the corners, telling us where to go. It was a pretty small area, so that was good, because you could see the staff on the borders of our limits. Caleb started the first conversation because he was the one holding the tract. :) On the bus they told us to make sure we took turns with who started conversations and to make sure we let everyone talk. This was not an issue in my group. Caleb approached an older gentleman, who really did not want to talk to us. He kept redirecting the questions and saying he really didn't care what we believed. His daughter (we think) walked up and he put her in front of us saying she was catholic and she would know the answers to our questions. Of course, we knew the answers to the questions we were asking, so that was not our concern, but we tried to talk to her anyways. She didn't really want to talk to us either and it just became really awkward, so that conversation ended pretty quickly. Next we talked to two younger guys, probably in their late twenties. One of them seemed truly interested in what we were talking about and was willing to answer our questions and listen, but the other one did not care. We talked to them for a little while, pretty much just reading the script, then moved on. We only had forty-five minutes, so we wanted to be able to talk to more than just a handful of people in that time. The next guy we talked to the longest. He had already been approached by another group, but Caleb took initiative and asked what he thought about what the other group said. Basically he said that we should not listen to what they teach us and learn things for ourselves, which we told him we already did. He also told us that if we believed in a loving God that would accept us into heaven without us being out there and talking to other people, there was not point. Overall, after the twenty minute conversation, he showed about six different worldviews. Sarah D. and I both walked away from him crying. Naturally, since Caleb was male, he was not seeing what was going on between me and Sarah, and he handed me the tract and told me to start the next one. Slapping him felt very appealing because he was the only one of the three of us that was not fighting back tears. I found another person that looked curious about what we were all doing, so we talked to him for about five minutes, leaving him with one of the 'checks' from our tracts. The 'checks' had information about what we were saying and a phone number they could call with any questions. After we talked to him, a leader told us to go ahead and walk back to the buses. When we got there we dabbed up with another evangelising group (or two) and prayed for the people we talked to. Then we were off, heading back to campus. The bus was very noisy on the way back and it was hard to hear anyone talking to you, including yourself. Bekah yelled "HEY!!" really loudly and then everyone got quiet enough we could talk to each other. My small group all burst out laughing, knowing that it was not a leader who said that, but a student. :) When we got back to campus, the second wave was waiting to load onto the buses. We had about fifteen minutes to eat dinner, then we could go to small group time to decompress from evangelising before our debrief. Dinner flew by, and the pops met outside the lecture room in a circle of comfy chairs. Christa let us all go around the circle and tell our stories from evangelising. Sarah and I went last, just because of the way we were sitting in the circle, and were surprisingly both able not to cry while we explained. When the second wave got back, we all found our evangelising groups and sat down in the lecture room. It was time for debrief. All of our group was needing a little bit of encouragement, so we were ready to hear the different stories. The way debrief works, is the leaders (in this case, Griffin and Christa) gave general guidelines, like "Who talked to an atheist?" or "Who got yelled at?". If this applied to your group, they would pick someone and your group would stand up and tell the story that applied. When asked if anyone talked to a Buddhist, Caleb raised his hand. Sarah and I gave each other quizzical looks, then we realized that the guy we talked to with six different worldviews main view was Buddhism. Christa was running the mic from group to group, so when she came over, we got an interesting look like 'Why didn't you tell me about this during small group time?'. Sarah and I knew we had some explaining to do. We did tell her, just not in the same words. :) The last one the called was "Who prayed with someone to accept Christ?". SIX small groups went up to the front. Several got to share stories. Overall, seven people accepted Christ, because one small group leader prayed with someone too. After that, they explained the gospel to us as students, then told all of us to close our eyes and bow our heads. Everyone who wanted to accept Christ was asked to look up. Three students accepted Christ that night. TEN people accepted Christ in a matter of about two hours. PRAISE BE TO GOD!!!!! We had worship after this, which everyone really wanted to do anyway, so it was good timing. :) Then we went straight into another lecture. "The Media's False Authority" by Paul Jordan. Then we got a short break, but were not supposed to leave our seats, so we stretched out a little then went into the next lecture. "The End of the Wizard's Ways" by Bill Jack. We sang one of my favorite songs. "Twelve men went to spy on Caanan" :) There are motions and it is really enjoyable!!! One thing that is really interesting about this lecture, is that Bill Jack talks about the meaning of the word 'oz'. It means 'strength'. The main point of the lecture was that God is our Oz. I thought that was really interesting! We went to t-time after this, at which Christa had made us another bag of popcorn, this time unburned. :) We sent Christa to bed pretty quickly after we rated our days, because she was really not feeling well. The whole group was really tired, so we headed to bed early. The end of another amazing day at Worldview Academy. :)