Dear praying friends,

I wanted to provide some highlights of the past few weeks of street ministry. The Autumn means we spend more time on college campuses, which is a lot of fun, but we had an unexpected visitor first.

The man on the left is Pastor Tommy. He’s from a church in New York state and has been learning more about personal evangelism, but didn’t know how to get started. He was searching on the Internet, and came across Open Air Campaigners. He gave our ministry a call, and he drove to Boston to spend three days with us so he could be trained in sharing his faith with strangers both one-on-one and one-to-many.

We were all very encouraged to have a Pastor humble enough to realize he needed training and that God sent him our way! It was fun getting to know Pastor Tommy. He was giddy like a little kid! He was so excited to be on the streets with us and he did a superb job! He’s going to be bringing what he learned back to his church. Please keep Pastor Tommy and his church in your prayers! (There’s more photos of him below.)

Also, with the fall season comes college ministry.

College ministry is amazing because:

• People come from literally all over the world to Boston to attend college.
• College students often have more time to stay and talk than people downtown.
• College students have a lot more intellectual questions, so it’s a good opportunity to use apologetics to reason logically with people for the Kingdom.
• These students are our future leaders, so it’s a bit like witnessing to “Felix and Festus” early (See Acts 23-25).

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY: When my fellow OAC missionary, Eric Briscoe, was preaching in the open air at Boston University, a college professor came out of a building, approached Eric, and said, “I’m teaching an Intro to Religion class. Would you come inside and tell my students about Christianity?”

That doesn’t happen every day! And it’s amazing because, since Boston University is a private university, we can’t go onto university property, just the street outside the buildings. So it was really great to be able to be invited in to chat with a class of students!!!

Eric got to talk for about a half hour with the students and a handful spoke with him afterwards. Please pray that seeds will grow to good fruit!

Some notable encounters I’d appreciate prayer for are:

• Paul: Paul is a Northeastern University alumnus in his 60’s who was on campus and came by to talk. We talked for about a half hour. He held a number of strong opinions, many which are just factually wrong. For instance, he maintained that the Bible couldn’t be trusted because it was translated so many times and changed over the years. I told him about the manuscripts that we have that are very early and that the Scriptures we have today are the same as the originals. Then he’d rabbit-trail to something else that was fairly easy to answer.

  Bottom line with Paul is that he doesn’t want to believe. When I spoke of sin and our need for forgiveness, that’s when I sensed he was being reached. His conscience was agreeing that he had sinned and needs a savior, but it made him a bit nervous. Would you please pray for Paul?

• Greg: Greg described himself as an atheist, but was interested in chatting with Aaron. They talked for quite some time and Greg gave Aaron his contact information. Aaron has been unable to reach Greg since. Please pray we’ll run into him again, or that he’ll get back to us.

• John: Often at universities it is the professors who can be the toughest to reach. So when I saw a man clearly in his 50’s dressed professionally in a suit making a b-line at me, I braced myself. But it turns out it wasn’t an angry professor, but an excited born-again Christian who worked at the university. He shook my hand, thanked me for sharing Christ on campus, and then gave me a giant bear hug! (Did I mention this man was much bigger than me???) I think we made each-others’ day!

• Many Others Who We Don’t Know Their Name: There are soooo many students who stop and talk with us and I wish I could get all their names. Things move so fast at the campus, that I often don’t get a chance to stop to write down the names. I need to get better at that. But God knows their names.

  We have spoken with students with green hair, and no hair, and students who are tall, and short, and all hosts of backgrounds and back-stories. One unbeliever heard me preach the “cow message” that I like to do, and she said to Aaron, “He makes a compelling case.” Many students thank us for talking with them. All of them need prayer to know Christ.

Here are photos. Please click on them to enlarge and see a description.

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I can’t thank you enough for your prayers, notes of encouragement, and financial support. Without any of these we would not be able to be on the field reaching people for the kingdom of Christ!

all for Jesus,

Mark (and family)