Colorado: Day 4

As per the usual plan, most of us got up at 7:45 for devotional and/or a shower and ate breakfast in the dining room at 8:30. I woke up kind of sick that day and picked away at a muffin, which was delicious. After breakfast, we met as a team and went up to Georges' office. For the next couple of hours, we listened to the story of his life and his testimony. We listened to how he grew up in Lebanon and was raised Greek Orthodox Christian, and how he was kicked out of his school when he started attending a church that taught of a more personal, loving type of Jesus. He told us of how he was involved in gangs for a time and how he came back to Christ. He also told us of his twelve year struggle to translate a new version of the Bible into Arabic. After much political opposition, he was finally able to get it done, and now there are millions of copies of his Bible all over the world. It was very inspiring to listen to Georges talk in the quiet of his office. He is a very gentle, soft spoken man who has gone through a lot in his life, and God has worked in him in very powerful ways.

Afterward, we went into another office and talked about what we would be doing that day. We decided to go to the Islam exhibit at the college and then return later that night to listen to a panel of Islamic students. We prayed for God to be with us that day and for the students that we would encounter.

We walked over to the University of Colorado (CU) and went to the exhibit, which included many posters that informed people about the religion and a movie about the hajj, or journey to Mecca. It was very informative and helped us learn a lot about Islam before we attended the week's events.

After the exhibit, we drove into the foothills above Boulder and climbed up to some large rocks and sat down looking over the city. We each found passages from the Bible to read to each other and explained why we chose the passage and discussed it with each other. It was very insightful and engaging, and we got to learn even more about each other as God was preparing us for the week.

We came back to the Horizons house and ate dinner before leaving for the college again. The panel was made up of eight Muslim students, four guys and four girls. Two of the girls were converts to Islam from Christianity, and one was white. It was a good mixture of backgrounds. People submitted their questions and the panel answered them as best as they could. They explained the basics and origin of Islam and the five pillars, and pretty much rehashed everything that was on the posters in that room. The overall theme and message that they seemed to want to get across, however, was that Islam was very accepting of Christianity and Judaism and that there was no reason that we couldn't get along. This, I believe, was said more or less to attract college students to Islam. Any hard questions were answered with hesitation and shallow answers. This panel did not contain the best speakers of that week.

After they were finished, we went around the room talking to different people about their thoughts on what the panel said. There were a lot of different opinions and viewpoints and we got to know a lot of people that night.

We went back to Horizons and talked about what we saw that night and how we felt about the panel and the other people's thoughts. All of us had very interesting conversations with a number of people, some Muslim, some not. All in all, the night was rather sobering. We prayed again for the people we met that night and for the rest of the week. At this point, we were all pretty exhausted from the mountain climbing earlier and went to bed.