Home School Conference in Memphis

Wow, I am definitely behind on posting! I have a lot to write about, but I think I’ll start with a quick report of our last trip. We just arrived home from the homeschool conference in Memphis, TN.

Setting up

One of the highlights of homeschool conferences is meeting and visiting with so many other godly families.

These girls told us about the small group study they have been doing using Before You Meet Prince Charming

Sarah’s session on “Preparing Young Ladies for their Teenage Years.”

Here Sarah is talking with a lady who has been leading a Bright Lights group for several years in Nashville, TN. She was full of good reports, and it was truly a blessing to be able to hear how the Lord has been working there.

One thing about road trips is that they provide so many new contacts and opportunities to witness. Before the trip, I prayed that the Lord would prepare the people’s hearts that we would witness to along the way. One of the clearest examples of God’s answer to this prayer was an Italian Catholic man who was the manager of a small gas station in Missouri. His station was out of gas, and we weren’t sure why he was even open. There were no customers, and he was just sitting at a table reading a book when we walked in. He rose to greet us and to see what we needed. My dad and I handed him a dinosaur booklet and then we noticed the book he had been reading sitting on his table right next to his ash tray. It was “One Heartbeat Away,” (by Mark Cahill). Apparently, he had been reading the book just before we arrived! (This is an evangelistic book that we often give away to unbelievers—in fact we had some “give away copies” with us in our van.)
Immediately we realized that God must want us to talk with this man. Although he believed in Jesus, he firmly stated that he thinks one must earn their salvation.
“Then who gets the credit?” my dad asked.
“That’s how you earn it—by getting credits! You go to church, you believe, you pray…” he said.
Obviously, he didn’t understand dad’s point. His broken English probably contributed to that.
“If we earned it, then it would not be by God’s mercy,” Dad explained.
That stumped him for a second, but he seemed unwilling to reason. Instead, he held firmly to his “salvation by works” mentality.
Understandably, if someone has been thinking this way for their entire life, it is not easy to change in one 15 minute conversation. But we have a special tool—prayer. God can change his thinking.
He told us he was up to chapter five in “One Heartbeat Away.” Chapters six, seven and eight are about the law and the gospel, so hopefully he keeps reading. Please pray for him!