Pastor Ron Allen of Bible Baptist Church and I graduated in the same class in 1982. It was great to be with him again. I am thankful for what the Lord is doing there! Our team has also been with his principal, Brad Parker, before when he was a principal up in Maryland. The Lord gave us a great week in many ways. The teens were all in all week! We had almost one hundred different teens attend the evening rallies. We also were encouraged with the response of the teens to the Lord’s working in their hearts.

One young man came back after the first War night to get saved. When Zach, the Ranger team captain, did follow-up with him, he clearly didn’t get it. After chapel the next day, Zach spent over an hour talking to him, but he still wasn’t ready. On Friday night after testimony service, he found Zach and said he wanted to get saved. He prayed to receive Christ with tears in his eyes! When asked where he would go when he died, his face entirely changed, and he said “heaven”. He ran out and told me that he had gotten saved! It was a battle, but praise the Lord for this young man’s salvation! 

One young lady responded to the invitation after being convicted about what she was reading. Abi, the Ranger team co-captain, was able to sit down with and encourage her with verses from the Bible. She shared in her testimony: 

“This week…I’ve gotten things out that shouldn’t have been there; they might not have been necessarily wrong, but they had a place in my life that they shouldn’t have and for me they needed to be gone. He’s helped me do that and to see that they were occupying the place in my life that only God should have.”

One day after chapel, two young men approached their respective team captains regarding work that God was doing in their hearts. Both young men took the step to get right with their parents. One of them shared: 

“God has been working with me over something for a long, long time and I kept resisting it…. This week…I just started saying, “Ok, God, I’ll listen; I’ll do what you want me to do even though I’m scared”…it’s so freeing, it’s so much better to know that finally, I’m right with God.” 

The other young man also shared a powerful testimony about how he had had sin in his life, had gotten saved and gotten victory, but had never told anyone about his sin. He was convicted during Thursday chapel about how covering this sin was keeping him from a close walk with God. He shared in his testimony: 

“…I was feeling guilt and I just came to my parents and I told them… it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because I didn’t know how they would respond…I just told them straight up what it was and…it just felt like 50 pounds just fell off my shoulders when I said it and it was just truly amazing!”

Below are two other testimonies: 

“The message we learned today, actually, was we can’t do anything by ourself—it’s impossible. We have to give 100% and that really touched me cuz I was like, “you know what, I can’t fight this on my own. I need God to do it for me.”

“Dr. Jim today talked about how we need to step out of the boat in our Christian life… I’ve made decisions in my life that I never kept… But today he made the great point of saying, “You need to step out of the boat and trust Him fully.”