From University to Rehab

This morning a group of us traveled to one of the universities in the Port of Spain.  The original plan was to spend a couple of hours walking around the campus praying, handing out tracts, and starting up conversations with some of the students with the purpose of sharing our faith.  Upon arriving and speaking to the man in charge we were informed that we would not be allowed to do that because it goes against the schools’ policy.  We had brought some literature with us and were given permission to set up a table in one of the lounges and if students happened to walk in and approach us then we could talk with them.  I think this actually ended up working to our advantage because we had a number of people come through who had got word we were there and were curious about who we were and what we were doing.  God definitely worked everything out.

Later in the afternoon my team was picked up by a couple of men who run a place called the Rebirth Center.  It is a rehabilitation center for men who are or have been addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, who are homeless, unemployed, or any number of things.  This place was in the middle of nowhere.  They own quite a bit of land that is surrounded by the mountains and the jungle and they have a garden where they grow a lot of their own food and have a number of various jobs and leadership positions for the men to fulfill during their stay.  What an amazing time I had here.  There was probably somewhere between 30 and 40 men and we did a short program for them.  We introduced ourselves and the ship, had an interactive sketchboard message talking about brokenness and how Jesus came to heal our brokenness and then one of our guys shared his testimony and by the end of our little program we had 8 men come up to give their lives to Christ and we got to pray for each of them individually, Amen!  After this happened there were many others who were still interested in knowing more, so we had a spontaneous question and answer time where the men asked all kinds of spiritual questions.  Then a couple of the men that were already believers chose to come up front and share their stories with us and a couple of other guys each sang a song for us.  It was an amazing time.  Afterwards we had the chance to hang out and chat with them and some of them went and cut down some coconuts and sliced them open with their machete and passed it to me to drink; nothing quite like fresh coconut water!  I found it very easy to talk to these men, or rather they found it very easy to talk to me and I mostly just listened.  Our bus driver had to come tell me 3 different times that we needed to leave.  I could have stayed there all night, it was such a beautiful place and the guys have such crazy stories and it was such an amazing opportunity to share a bit of hope with them.  What a blessing to be used by God!