SAM CHISHOM

Hey everyone. I pray my newsletter finds you well! WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!! The Tour/Outreach phase has been pretty incredible. TheLord moved in so many different ways. Across the whole of the Circuit Riders tour we had 22teams organising events at 460 universities and high schools in the US, Europe and South Africa. We gathered 39,801 people and saw 4,866 of them give their lives to/and encounteringthe Lord. PRAISE THE LORD!!! There were 278 healings and 57 baptisms. The Lord is moving in Gen Z and they are so hungry for Him. For the first time in a long time, Christianity is no longer on the decline, it is on the rise and we are seeing that everywhere including here in theUK. More specifically for my tour, I was on the Great Lakes Tour team of which there were 11great people. We went to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Chicago. We went to 15 universities and 1 high school. We gathered 856 people and saw 29 salvations. There were 4 healings and no baptisms. Our events consisted of worship, a message and then ministry time for whatever the Holy Spirit was leading us to address with those specific people. We would usually have on our ‘second night’ events which are called ‘Men Who Lead’ and ‘Brave Love Women.’ These are the Circuit Rider expressions of how they want to empower men and women in Jesus, and are more focused on the individual genders. We also had certain venues where we did evangelism, and evangelism training. The area we were in is a part of the ‘Bible Belt,’ where there is a heavy religious spirit in a lot of places, and quite a few people have fallen into the belief that salvation comes from works, such as going to church every Sunday or volunteering in various activities. The Lord put it on our hearts to remind them that it is not about works but through grace, the free gift from Jesus, and there is nothing we can do to earn salvation. The passage that we were preaching from was Matthew 5:13-16 where Jesus talks about us, as Christians, being salt and light in this world. We are to be in the world but not a part of it. We are to be a light on a lampstand and a city on a hill, where people can see the light of Jesus within us and know that we are different. Because of what Christ did on the cross, a Christian can’t be defeated by sickness or even death. The only thing that can take down a Christian is compromise, which is allowing things that are not of Christ to creep in and slowly take over our lives. This will eventually separate us from Him if we are not strict with what boundaries we put up to safeguard us.

Above are all the stats for the Universities and the High School that we went to. Since much of what we did was quite repetitive I’ll rather share briefly some of the highlights and anything out of the ordinary. We had quite a few more rededications than I have listed, but quite a few times we did a ministry call for rededications rather than hands up.

I started out by flying from Rhode Island, where I’d spent Christmas, to Grand Rapids, Michigan on January 8th to meet up with my team and three other teams. We officially began the tour with three days of ‘Kickoff’ which was a time to prepare before setting off. Our first stop was to be at Wayne State in Detroit. Unfortunately, at our host home which was next to a frozen lake, we must have set a new record for the fastest ER visit when one of my leaders fell on the ice and was concussed, and then one of the lady students on our team had to go home after we suspected she had pneumonia. After this rather crazy beginning, things settled down and we settled into a fairly regular routine.We next travelled up to Michigan State University (MSU) in Lansing, and had a worship and intercession night for the campus. The following night, we did some evangelism on the main street starting at 9pm till midnight, and had some really cool conversations about the Gospel with students. I also met a Zimbabwean lady who was a student there and I was able to hang out with her for most of the evening.

We then travelled down to Spring Arbor, where I experienced the coldest temperature I've ever felt at -29C (-15F)! The university is a Christian University where we had 3 healings of a broken foot, and two knees. We then travelled back up to Grand Rapids, where we held an event at Cornerstone University. After the main event, the students led an intercession time where they were crying out to the Lord for a revival on their campus which was really cool to see. We then travelled down to Ann Arbor where we first went to the University of Michigan (UM) and then to Eastern Michigan University (EMU). At EMU, there was a cool testimony of a guy having such an encounter with the Lord that he went and threw out all of his drugs.

On January 29th , we travelled down to Lebanon, Ohio near Cincinnati, where we first met up with a family who had started a prayer barn and had a worship and intercession time with them. For the following three days, we partnered up with a church called Revive who were holding an event called Cinci for the Gospel. We had a worship night the first night and then did evangelism training and evangelism on the second day. Across all the teams that went out we saw about 15 salvations and about 60 seeds planted. All those people are so fired up for Jesus and really want to see Cincinnati saved which was really cool. We then made our way up to Miami University in Miami, Ohio (not to be confused with Miami, Florida) before coming back to the University of Cincinnati and then onto Ohio State University in Columbus. One of our leaders, Anna, led two girls in a McDonald’s in Miami to Jesus and one of the other leaders, Asher, led a guy to Christ outside of a Raising Canes (Chicken Finger Restaurant) in Cincinnati.

On February 2 nd , we made our way to Richmond, Indiana where the lady student who had been ill rejoined us. Thank the Lord it didn’t end up being pneumonia! However, her church hosted an event after an university in the area cancelled on us. We also watched the Super Bowl at her home which was really fun (as someone who enjoys American Football). After this we had a period of battling a bout of sickness in our team where now one of the guys had to go home to have some things checked out with his doctor. After this we travelled across to Terra Haute to have an event at Indiana State University, then continued on to Ball State and Hanover University. At Ball State, we had our event in our hosts’ living room which made it a really intimate worship session with a much more condensed message. Hanover is a lovely Christian University so we were welcomed with open arms and blessed with food vouchers. We had another evangelism training session before having our largest gathering in the evening. From there, we went across to Purdue University in West Lafayette before making our way up to LaPorte where we had another worship and intercession night in an antique store! For our final event alone as a team we were in Hammond, holding an event at Purdue Northwest.

For the last week of our Tour Phase, we joined up with the Midwest Team in Chicago andwent to the only High School on our tour. Three of us were given the incredible opportunity to go into West Aurora High and evangelise in the cafeteria for two hours, which is essentially illegal unless you are invited. We spent our time going from table to table talking to students about the Gospel. A special experience for me, personally, was that I had a guy (let's call him J) come up to me while I was manning a table with tracts and Bibles. I started talking to him and shared the Gospel with him. I know it couldn’t have been the words I was using because in my opinion it was not a great communication of the Gospel - it had to have been the Lord speaking to him directly through me. In the end I gave him the opportunity to be saved and he was so eager and prayed the sinner's prayer. At the time, I forgot to ask if there was anything he needed prayer for, but soon afterwards he came back with a friend who said he was a Christian. I asked his friend a few questions to see how deep his relationship with the Lord went. I then prayed for the friend and asked J if there was anything he needed prayer for, having remembered that I hadn’t prayed for him. He told me that he had lost his father not too long before that. At that moment, I realised why the Lord had chosen me to go into that school. Having lost my own father fourteen years ago, I was able to empathise with him in a way that not many other folk would be able to. I prayed over him and literally straight after that my friend, Jacob, came over and I introduced J to him. Jacob proceeded to wrap J in the biggest hug and started praying that the Holy Spirit would fall upon, him. When he was done, J was struggling to stay standing having encountered the Holy Spirit in a wonderful way. By the time we had to leave, we had seen 21 salvations and 1 rededication. At the event in the evening that same day, we saw one of our team receive healing. The night after we met up with the Midwest team to hold an event at the University of Illinois Chicago, and then to close our tour we had a regional event at a local church and did some more evangelism training and evangelism. I have not included the stats for these last two events as they weren’t led by our team, we were just supporting the Midwest team.

On March 8 th we headed back up to Grand Rapids for our Debrief, which consisted of preparing us to come back home as well as our graduation from the DTS. On March 12 th I started my way back to Los Angeles by train. I still had a week before I needed to catch my flight back to the UK so I had decided that a scenic return would be great. However, as we were travelling through New Mexico we were stopped for seven hours due to a wildfire on the tracks, and then because of the wild weather the train had slowed down significantly as well. I arrived 12 and a half hours later than expected into Huntington Beach and had a wonderful few days with Ruth, the Hayes, and Dan Jones (the latter two are friends from my church in Barnstaple). However, the travel hiccups weren’t over! As I was waiting for my flight on March 20 th ,we were informed that our flight was delayed and then cancelled, due to Heathrow having to close because of the substation fire. I was eventually able to catch another flight on the 22 nd , praise the Lord!

An exciting development is that I have recently found out that I have been accepted back to work on staff at CR, so God willing I’ll be heading back out to Huntington Beach around mid August. I’m not sure what God’s future plans are for me, but I’ll definitely keep you updated! Meanwhile thank you all for your support, whether that be financially or prayerfully