Crunch Time

Tomorrow morning we leave for Cuenca!! This past week has flown by as I can't believe tomorrow is already Friday.  This whole trip has flown by as next week is our last week here in Guayaquil :(

It is getting down to crunch time with the mission here in Guayaquil and I know I am definitely feeling stressed.  We set a goal to share the Gospel with 555 students between the 14 of us during our 5 weeks on campus (closer to 4 weeks).  Our midway point was last weekend as the tallies so far were added up.

We have shared the Gospel with about 140 students on campus in which 60 of them prayed to receive Christ!  Almost half of the students we talk to pray to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior, that's a phenomenal statistic! We have shared the Gospel with 280 people if you count the 140 we talked to during our church outreach at the children's hospital.  It is also safe to assume more than 280 people heard the Gospel in the first half of the trip because they probably showed the booklets to their friends and families, as did my friend Franco with his sister.  So I guess in terms of where we are at with our goal, we are on track, but that is from a big boost due to the church outreach which helped double our numbers.

At this point in the trip though, it is past the numbers.  The goal we set out was for motivation to start the movement on campus.  The movement has already been started.  We have all become incredibly invested in the mission here that we don't need goals to spur us onward.  The 555 student goal may not get reached but an impact has definitely been made on the campuses.

With less and less sharing opportunities, comes more and more follow ups and discipleship appointments.  The staff leaders of our team have spent time pouring into the student leaders on campus as we have spent time in follow ups helping to strengthen the spiritual relationships of the new believers.  There are multiple parts of the mission here in Guayaquil.  To help bring people to a spiritual relationship with God, spend time strengthening their relationship during follow ups, and then connecting them to the spiritual movement on campus.

In the past week, I have been able to be a part of all the different facets of our mission.  I have spent time sharing the Gospel with my teammates in which we brought students to Christ.  I had two follow up appointments today (and hopefully even more next week) in which we discussed the security of our relationship with God which is very important to understand as a new believer.  I have also had the opportunity to speak with many already Christians on campus (God has been putting so many in our path at Espol) about the mission of Campus Crusade for Christ (Vida Estudiantil) and invite them to take part.  It was awesome to see our new Christian friends, Carlos Luis and Alex, go sharing with Megan and I last week.

God is doing great things on both of the campuses here in Guayaquil!  It is just stressful knowing we have just one week left to leave a lasting impact until the next team comes to pick up where we left off which may not be until the winter.  It is important to get enough students involved so that the movement can stay alive once we leave.  We have all been trying to get a lot of contacts from the students as well so we can keep in touch for encouragement after we leave.  Pray that God will really help us to leave a lasting impact on the campus.  We are just planting the seeds while He will do the watering but just pray that we carry out God's plan to fullness.

Excited for llama sweaters,
Jeremy