I’ve been wanting to write this letter to you since Creationfest Northwest ended weeks ago, but then I decided to wait out and tell you how my story unfolded. It all kind of came together today. The day of your Heaven and Hell sermon at creation was the day I was so incredibly motivated and captivated in a sense where I knew I needed to write my friend a letter. Of all my days growing up in the church, I had never once heard or considered writing a letter to share the gospel. I am a writer…I love to blog, journal, and write my friends letters…I do it all the time! But never once had I considered it a possibility to write a letter to a friend sharing about my Jesus and His amazing love. When I was listening to your sermon I was taken back when you suggested this as a possibility to share the gospel with someone. In that moment I thought to myself, “No, I can’t write a letter…that’s too easy, it’s too comfortable. When I share the gospel, it has to be outside my comfort zone.” I was seriously thinking this, but the more I entertained the idea of writing a letter, the more I realized how brilliant it was, especially for reaching out to my particular friend I was thinking of. Jen is her name. I began to think of Jen and her personality and about how a letter would be perfect. She’s not much of a face-to-face talker, but would respond much better to a letter, I thought. All of a sudden there were so many advantages to writing a letter. It would give her more time to think about things, she would be able to read it over and over again if she wanted, I could get all my thoughts out easily, and it was what God was calling me to do in that moment. By the end of your sermon I knew exactly what I needed to do: Go home and write this letter…within 48 hours after Creation. Immediately after you finished speaking, I turned to my friend Phil who was with me at the time and told him exactly what I was going to do. He looked at me, kind of surprised, and said in response, “I need to write my friend Danny a letter too.” It was at that point that we both decided we would motivate, encourage, and challenge each other in this journey when we got home from creation.

And so it began. My friend Phil wrote his letter to Danny (who is a guy I know from my school, and he’s known since elementary school) and I wrote my letter to Jen. As I began to write this letter…I grew very nervous and my words were very few. It was at that point that I realized that this wasn’t going to be as “easy” and “comfortable” as I originally thought it would be (God was showing me!). After praying for the words to come, God spoke right through me and wrote this letter to Jen sharing my testimony and Jesus’ precious gift. It was incredible how it all flowed together. I even learned more about how my personal testimony fits in so well with God’s promise and gift to me. It was really neat. Delivering the letter was even more nerve-wracking. But I did it. And so did Phil. Phil even bought Danny a bible to go along with the letter. I was very proud of him.

Phil received a response first. It was an email. Danny exclaimed how much it meant to him that Phil took the time to write that letter. He even said how much it meant to him to hear the gospel coming from him! He talked about how for the past few months his dad has been battling cancer and its opened his (Danny’s) eyes to a lot of things. Danny still claimed that he wasn’t sure if he believed the story yet (the story being the gospel that Phil shared in the letter), but it was a great start to a long journey. Mind you, when Phil asked Danny about his beliefs exactly a year ago Danny said that he “didn’t talk about that sort of thing”. What a turn around!! Phil responded in such a beautiful way! And since that day we haven’t stopped praying for him! I truly believe God is going to continue to break his heart and soften it to His perfect love. I’m praying!

Next came the response from Jen! I did not think I was going to get a response, and if I did get one, I did not think it would come in the form in which I received it: A text message. It read something like this, “Sorry its taken me a long time to respond. I read your letter! I just want you to know that I love you a lot. I didn’t know any of that…and I would really like to get together to talk about it more soon.” It was a relief. I was so overjoyed. It took a while to get together because I went straight to a camp with my church last week, and she was very busy this week…so it took us up to today to finally get together. Our conversation was awesome. Discussion about letter didn’t come up for a while, nor the contents of it, however I eventually brought it up. We didn’t talk much about it, but I told her the way I felt, and how much she means to me and how Jesus really wants to be in her life too. I apologized, as well, for never bringing it up before, although Jesus has always been my life. It’s going to be ongoing, but our conversation was blessed tonight. I’m so thankful. And need I not forget that while we were having this conversation, I’m not kidding you, Danny (yes, the Danny that my friend Phil wrote his letter to) walked through the door of the restaurant we were eating at! I don’t believe that was a coincidence. It was very neat. And I had no doubt God was there and has been there to create this story that He has…and it all begun with you! And I wanted to thank you for that! As I was telling my youth pastor this story he encouraged me to write you to tell you what has become of it all. He said that it’s always encouraging for him to hear stories of how his students are moving and speaking Jesus’ name, and he told me that you would find it encouraging as well. So here I am…telling you the whole story!

Thank you for reading this! This whole thing is so exciting for me!! Thank you for taking a part in it!

Until the party,

Kelsey Shaw

P.S. I tried emailing this to you, but I could not locate an email address for you. So I am hoping you receive this. Thanks so much!

The two letters you did were – great! As ‘real’ as the one from hell was – it was an eye opener of truth. Is there anywhere on this Web site I can get the text to that letter? Thanks…

Eternal Blessings,

Joshua Galla – Boonsboro, MD