Wow, these past two days have been something else. It's been a really faith building time and a very tough time. It all started a long time ago (like last year I think) when a fellow who works on computers at the local college was fired for putting "God bless" at the end of an email (his name is Mat). Then, about a month ago, he and his friend Josh (who goes to church with us) were taken out of class under armed guard, questioned and expelled. They were not allowed to call their parents, a lawyer or even go to the bathroom. Josh's sister Michaela was also taken out of class and not allowed to call her parents. She has since been up on probation for a year: nobody has been able to really figure out why. Something was said about her biligerant attitude. If you knew Michaela you would realize what a dumb charge that is. She is probably the most quite, soft spoken person I know! So, after much problems and riggermarro, they finally sceduled hearings for Josh and Mat on the 11th. Josh went in at 1:30. BonnieJean and I showed up about one to take part in the prayer vigil that they had going. We had a chance to talk to Josh some and then he went in. We stayed for a couple hours, walking around the building, reading our Bibles and praying in a group. Finally at about four we went on home, but a pretty good group stayed until Josh came out at 6:15. Mat was supposed to have had his hearing at 2:30, so they resceduled his for Thursday (the 12th). It turns out that they prayer group had really unnerved them during Josh's hearing, so they told Mat to come at 9, then called him at 10:30 that night and said to come at 8, hoping that they would be done before we got there. Enter Sam, a dear lady from church and Josh's aunt. She called us at 7:30 and by 8:10 we were up there in a big circle praying. We spent all day up there, except for about an hour and a half that Mom had us come home. Finally, at about 6:00 they finished the hearing and let Mat out. He had some really good news for us: he had not been given a gag order and Josh's gag order had been removed! So we all headed off campus and head "debriefing" with Mat and Josh for about an hour and a half.

Some really cool things had happened. One had been that over the two days, everyone had been praying for "conffusion in the camp of the enemy". I heard those exact words at least three million times. Then, when Josh and Mat started telling us about what happened, it was amazing to hear how God had worked! The main wittness for the oposition had hardly been able to answer a single question and the chairman of the hearing had been very good.

So, the people who judge the hearing have 15 days to make their decision, which will then be passed to the president of the college as a recomendation. It's far from over and we're still doing alot of praying, but it's really been a great experiance.

One neat thing was that I got to get to know Josh and his family better. Our families have always been on pretty friendly terms, but I've wanted to get to know them better. I also found out that I actually knew Mat! I hadn't realized that it was a Mat I had met at several church funtions.

So, please keep Josh, Mat and Michaela and their families in prayer.