Cullison June Prayer Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

Baptisms are one of my favorite things to watch. They make me emotional like no other religious or faith service does. I don’t know what it is about them exactly, but there is something that gets me about a person taking a public step like baptism and the powerful imagery it holds to come out of this water grave like Jesus himself came back to life from the tomb.

On Good Friday a few months ago, we had a baptismal service with our youth. While we were supposed to have four teens get baptized, due to a variety of circumstances, all but one dropped out. On the day of, one of the young women who has come off and on for the last few years showed up to support the girl getting baptized. Before she came though, she felt like the Lord was telling her she should be baptized as well. After going through all of the normal Scripture we take potential baptizees through, and questions for her to confirm to us that she knew what decision she was making and she was willing to publicly commit her life to Jesus, we agreed to baptize her as well!

Afterward, several of our leaders came around them to pray for Daniela and Abby. It was powerful seeing these young women give their testimony, through tears, to their peers and family. They have walked through some hardships, and one of them is still in the midst of some really harrowing life stuff, but the fact that we have connection and community with them, and even more importantly they are connected to Jesus, brings me hope. In just a week or so from the time you get this, we have several more who are to be baptized at our end-of-the-school-year Beach BBQ. We have identified up to about eight youth who regularly are part of our community here that would be open to being baptized and taking this next step. Pray that nothing would distract or block them from taking this next step. Pray that all of these young people press in hard to Jesus, live into his Lordship, and claim their identity as citizens, nay, activists, in God’s Kingdom.

Trusting Him,

Bryan Cullison