Fishers 4 Men: Team Yale: Mission Accomplished

To give you a quick overview, I got this from Wikipedia:

Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, nineteen U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and several foreign heads of state.

Incorporated as the Collegiate School, the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed Yale College to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the Ph.D.

Yale College was transformed beginning in the 1930s through the establishment of residential colleges, 12 of which now exist (but with two more planned). Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.

The University's assets include a US $16.3 billion endowment, the second largest of any academic institution, and more than two dozen libraries that hold a total of 12.5 million volumes (making it one of the world's largest library systems). Yale and Harvard have been rivals in academics, athletics, and other activities for most of their history, competing annually in The Game and the Harvard-Yale Regatta.

When I first heard of the opportunity to lead the team at Yale University I was a bit anxious. I didn’t know what to expect since I hadn’t seen anyone in that area for 25 years.

I prayed as the Lord formed the team. One by one they came…but not as many as I’d hoped. Since I live in Florida and the event was in Connecticut, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and was dependent on the Lord each day for the details. He brought Stan Gucwa and his wife, Donna along. They kindly took delivery of the boxes and moved their cars over. My old friend, Pastor Steve Baker and his wife Colleen joined the group and even dragged their nephew, Wayon to the event. Stan spoke to his home group and Chand and Roberta Ahuja got excited and involved-they were also kind enough to invite me to 'Hotel Ahuja". Tina Carlson was all about this project and was able to provide details about the campus we desperately needed. Then LW sent me an email from some guy named James Harriott. After giving him a hard time and making sure he was who he said he was, he joined the group. We are so thankful that he did.

We had our lone meeting Monday and put our heads together over a campus map. Then we did some role-playing. We had a great time and as the Lord saw fit, a bond formed between family. Donna made sure no one went away hungry!

We used the folding crates from Staples as suggested and they were fabulous. Just what we needed since we didn’t have a very large group. We needed to get in there and get those books out since we didn’t have an official invitation onto the campus. There is no free speech area either at Yale. This is probably a requirement for a censored education

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On the recon trip that Tina and I took 2 days before the big event, we spotted an area rather like a quadrangle. We hung out and saw that it had the best traffic of any area.

Wednesday 8:30 am: We met in the parking lot and drove to New Haven to the street we had agreed upon. Stan had organized everything and even pre-packed the folding crates before loading the cars. All we had to do was take them out and GO!

We spread out to different points. Students trickled by this morning. The books went pretty easily and after we had about half of them distributed, Stan walked in and told me he had just run into a guy who ‘wigged out’ when he saw what Stan was passing out. He said, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow!” The student had jumped off of his skateboard and was now making phone calls furiously. Within minutes, he was joined by two other people. The young man, named Ashok was almost embarrassed to be surprised by us. One of the other young men had a box with papers, which he was furiously stapling together. He would staple some together and then try to distribute them along side of us. But he had to continually run back and staple some more together. Seems they were not prepared-even though they thought the event was less than 24 hours away.

Among the comments heard were:

-One professionally dressed woman (50’s) hugged it, raised her fist and said, “I’m with you-the gospel of Charles Darwin!”
-some said-”This is deceitful!”
-most people said, “Thanks!”
-after a quick review of intro, one very angry atheist said to me, “You are a transitional form-when you’re dead!!”
-another disturbed man brought it back and opened the book pushing it towards me and said, “How could you write this garbage?”
-Yale has many old churches and I was stationed outside one. A woman staffer came out and I offered her a book. She refused. When she returned I offered it again. She told me that she believed in God. I told her we did, too and asked her to read the intro. She gave me an odd look and took the book. In a few minutes her co-workers began to come out and ask for their own copy.

-Comments from SSA representatives:
- “Oh man, you’re supposed to come tomorrow!”
-“I wish I could get Ray to sign mine. This is going to be a family heirloom!”
-Stan told Mike from SSA that when Mike was judged on that day, he could not blame Stan for not telling him the truth. Mike replied with a laugh, “Yeah, that’s the one bad thing about being an atheist, we won’t get to say, “I told you so!”

-I did not have anyone profess to be a Christian

Tina found this article today.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2009/11/18/creationism-vs-secularism-showdown-cross-campus/

FOX Reports:
Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.