A Story of Salvation from NY: Austin Wilkins

Wednesday, June 17, 2010, our youth group set off to go door to door inviting people to a local block party. In doing this, we had doors shut in our faces, and people yelling at us for no apparent reason. Despite all of this, God gave us the strength we needed to continue on and invite people to the block party. What all of us prayed to accomplish that day was to share the gospel with those who had never heard. Most of the people we talked to made it sound quite obvious that they did not know the gospel, nor did they wish to. In saying that, there was one man who we found that did not act at all like those we had meet that day.

Born and raised in Staten Island, NY, Dan did not know who Jesus was. When Laura, a member of the mission team from Virginia, and I approached him with our Block Party invitations, he seemed really exited but regretful to tell us that he could not make it. He said he was going to be in a missions bike ride on Saturday. Of course, this led us to ask him if he went to Church and if he knew who Jesus was. What followed after that question was completely surprising to me. Dan said that he was Catholic and for sometime attended church regularly, but had absolutly not clue who Jesus was, so we asked if we could share with him. Dan then did something that we had not seen all day, he actually sat down and ask us to please tell him. The tone of his voice and the look on his face made us realize that we had found someone who really wanted to hear of Gods wonderful gift.

We then sat there and told him the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I will tell  you this with total confidence, when he prayed to God, accepting Christ into his heart, we knew that he was truly sincere. The sound in his voice, the look on his face, and that he almost seemed to act as if a 100 lb. weight was taken off his back. He then thanked Laura, Tim, Andrea, and my self for doing what we had been doing that day (Tim and Andrea were also in our group and joined in the conversation about 10 minutes in). For a good 30 more minutes we stayed there and continued to answer any questions he had.

Some things that you might want to know about Dan is that he is a former alcoholic, who is going to AA. We told him that he should not blame God that he was an alcoholic but that he should use what he has gone through to help others get away from alcohol. God has a plan for this man, and all of us could tell it. I just want to thank everyone at OCBC and at Salem Church for putting this together. What is being done up here is truly a great thing.

~Austin