1/30/25

Praise God for answering our prayers, and for using us as answers to the prayers of other people!

Today we met with *Anthony, a student at CSUF, to begin our Bible dialogue in the Gospel of Mark. We met *Anthony last week while conducting interviews with students as we walked around the college campus. In our brief interview, we asked *Anthony what he saw as the most important "ingredient" for a good conversation with a Christian, and *Anthony responded that passion is most essential. This was a very unique answer to this question, but that was not the only unique thing going on in our time together. We continued to talk and were very soon talking about *Anthony's religious background and experiences with Christianity. *Anthony told us that he was baptized as a young child but wasn't a devoted member of any religion. However, *Anthony told us about an experience that he had in a class in which he felt God was speaking to him. This was super interesting for *Anthony to share with pretty much complete strangers who just walked up to ask you a few interview questions. After our discussion, in which *Anthony said he would like to engage in a more in-depth dialogue of the Gospel, we gave *Anthony our information to reach out when he would like to set up a time to meet up again. Right after our meeting was over with *Anthony, he called Nick's phone so that we would have his phone number saved. For some reason, *Anthony was very trusting to us and yet was repelled by the "evangelists" for the cult groups on campus he had priorly encountered. After our meeting with *Anthony today, it makes a lot more sense why that is.

Today we met up again with *Anthony to begin looking into the Gospel of Mark and the claims Mark makes about who Jesus was and what He did. This conversation went very well, and *Anthony was extremely engaged with fantastic questions about the meaning and implications of the ten verses we covered in our hour-long meeting! I would butcher it to attempt recalling all of the great questions that *Anthony brought to our conversation and am trying to keep this relatively brief, but he was asking very good and thoughtful things related to the text. Near the end of our conversation, *Anthony told us something crazy! *Anthony told us that a few weeks ago he prayed a short prayer to God, asking God to reveal the reality of His existence through a sign. After that *Anthony was approached by the cults on campus, but he could see that there was something "weird", as he said, with those groups. Shortly following his cult encounter, *Anthony had his conversation with Nick and me, and *Anthony told us that this encounter was God's answer to his prayers and a sign testifying to the existence of God! What a privilege to serve as a minister of reconciliation; reconciling the world to God!

This was, however, more than merely one answered prayer discovered today! Before entering the college campus, Nick and I prayed for our time today and the ways we desired God to move specifically today. Nick prayed that the enemies of God would be scattered and thwarted, and I prayed that we would have good soil, prepared and cultivated by God, in which we can scatter the word of God to take root and grow. Both of our prayers were clearly answered today! Earlier in the morning, Nick and I went to a sort of campus activity fair where all of the groups and clubs set up stands and recruit people. When we arrived, we found that all of the cult groups had either left early or showed up too late to have a stand and were not to be found! This only makes sense as an answer to our prayers!

Our prayer for God to provide good and cultivated soil for us to sow into was clearly answered as God not only showed interest in *Anthony but has also been working without our knowledge to prepare *Anthony for what we have and will continue to uncover!

Praise God for the work He chooses to invite us as Christians into, and praise God for the evident work that He is doing in the life of *Anthony through His Spirit and His workers in the field!

• Please pray for *Anthony as he continues to move forward and further discover what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in the coming weeks! Please pray against the enemy's attacks and attempts to derail and discard the freshy sown word! Pray for spiritual and physical protection for *Anthony, Nick, and me as Satan is not pleased to lose people and will try to impose on this ministry in some way!

Thank you for the partnership with us in this ministry as we pray that the sown word strongly takes root and is not thwarted by evil! As testified above, God hears our prayers and co-labors with us in His field!

With love and peace,

Ivan Penrose