It's been two weeks and I'm still not used to the fact that we're six hours ahead of "the rest of the world."  This is how I think of home.  There's a lot of the world that does not reside within the boundaries of central time, but that time zone makes more sense to me, because it's what I know.

We had a good time on campus.  I went out sharing with Kyle this morning.  We approached a couple groups of students, and they were all french speakers.  We have a survey we had them fill out, but we've found that very few of the Francophone students speak english well enough to really understand an english Gospel presentation.

It was just about lunch time, so we were waiting for a couple girls to finish up an appointment and then we would all walk to the Campus Crusade office together.  While we waited a group of three students approached.  They asked to sit down (two of them sat between Kyle and I) and then looked at us as if to say, "So what do you have for us?"

I asked if they were Francophone or Anglophone, and they responded "Bilingual."  What this meant was that they are Francophone, but speak english.

I asked if they would like to hear about what we are doing and they said yes, so for the next 15-20 minutes I shared the "Would you like to know God personally" booklet with them.  Near the end of the booklet there's a diagram that shows two kinds of lives.  The circle on the left represents a life without Christ.  The circle on the right represents a life with Christ in control.

I asked the three students which circle represented their life.  Two of them said the one on the right, but one student name Sissi (it's pronounced Cee-Cee, and he was also the most engaged in the conversation) said he was the circle on the left.  I asked him which circle he wanted to represent his life, and he said the circle on the right.

Right there he prayed and invited Christ into his life.

One of the realities we face is that students will pray with an American (for reasons I still don't fully understand) to impress them, and not because of a genuine decision.  It's difficult to know if this was the case, but he was engaged and seemed to have a full comprehension of the conversation.  I set up a time to meet with him at 2:00 on Wednesday (8:00 am central) so if you think about it, please pray that he would show up at this time and be interested in learning more about his new relationship with Christ.

One down...

Our first full week on campus culminated today with an outreach.  This week we handed out 1500 invitations to a meeting about "Youth and Sexuality."  One of our staff, Tom Dorsch, spoke on the subject in French to a group of about 60 students.  It was a great end to a first week on campus.

We're learning that finding English speakers on campus is far more difficult than we anticipated, so we've had to get creative.  The invitations were a very natural conversation starter, and when we met English speakers (anglophones) we asked them if we could talk to them about their faith.

A surprising number of students say yes to this question.  On Tuesday Sarah and I were with one of the students when we met two anglophone students named Elvis and Valentine.  I asked them if I could show the the "Would You Like to Know God Personally" booklet, and they said they were free.

One of the things we've learned is that Africans are very quick to accommodate others, especially westerners, so it's common for them to agree with a gospel conversation to be agreeable, but it can be tricky to discern where their heart truly is in these conversations.  As I shared, I asked them questions, and they clearly were tracking with what I was saying.  When we reached the end of the booklet, they were both very clear that Christ was not in their lives, and they both said that they would like to have Christ in their lives.

When I asked them if they would like to pray to receive Christ, they both said that they would like to "meditate" on it more, because they wanted to make certain that the prayer truly reflected the desire of their hearts.

It was a very encouraging conversation, because it felt like they were being open and honest about where they are in their relationship with God.

Please pray for these two students as they contemplate the truths of the Gospel.

If anyone from CCC Risk Management is reading this...

...stop now.

We arrived in Yaoundé on Monday night at 6:00 pm local.  8 of our bags arrived in Yaoundé at 6 pm local on Thursday night.  So far that has been the biggest hiccup in plans.

It's hard to believe that we've already been here 5 days.  We've spent most of our time getting oriented to our surroundings and doing more training related to the work we'll be doing.

We're staying at a facility run by SIL, who partners with Wycliffe Bible Translators.  Our accomodations have been great so far if not a little stuffy at times (no air conditioning) but the weather has been great as well.

The biggest adventure was getting a frisbee stuck on the roof yesterday during a game of ultimate.  I was already on the roof before I asked myself, "Am I setting a bad example for the students?"