Origin into Schools

Today I participated in the Origin into Schools project with a team at The University of Texas at Austin.We had about 15 people on our team and 2000 books to distribute. We set up our main location at 22nd and Guadalupe in Austin. Guadalupe runs along the west side of the campus and serves as a main cross point for students going to and from class.

The books were well received. Many of the students asked if it was the book that was advertised on the Internet. I said yes. Some declined to take one, but most did take one. It took our team about two and a half hours to distribute 2000 copies of the book.

We were meet with a small amount of opposition. A couple of students took a book and then handed me that “bananas” bookmark that was advertised on the “don’t diss darwin” web site. I saved the bookmark for a souvenir of the day. Eventually, I got two more of the bookmarks for my sons. From the time that those students arrived on the scene, there were somewhere from 3-5 students at a time that were hanging around us handing out materials from the “don’t diss darwin” site as well as some information on a meeting they were having to promote evolution later this week.

In addition to the students, the most active and vocal of the resistance was a professor of biology. He also was handing out the information from “don’t diss darwin.” It was actually kind of funny to watch him scurry around chasing the students that had taken a book and try to give them his material as well. He and I spoke off and on throughout the morning. I asked him what evidence he had for evolution. He would say things like, “I can’t get into all that.” So I would ask, “what is your favorite piece of evidence” and still no answer would come. Finally, he agreed to sit down with us over coffee after we were done. And, he apparently did sit down with one of the members of our team. However, from what I hear, he still did not offer any evidence of evolution. At one point I asked him how many bookmarks he had. He said 500. I said, “that’s not going to be enough.” I think he then sent some students to make some more copies.

The most violent response I got all day was one girl as I offered her a copy of the book, she tried to spit on the book. Even the evolutionists that were handing out their counter materials said, “that was inappropriate.”

Once the books were all distributed, some members of the team did open air preaching for several hours. We had a number of great one on one conversations with the students. We handed many tracts. I think I personally handed out 300-500 tracts. So the whole group must have handed out a few thousand Gospel tracts. The Law and the Gospel was shared. And we had some great fellowship within the group. I got to meet several people that I previously only had meet online on facebook and via email and a few phone conversations.

I’ll update with pictures and videos later.

Here are some links to Origin into Schools in the news

• Los Angeles Daily News – November 18, 2009
• Gainesville Sun – November 18, 2009
• Forbes Press Release – November 18, 2009
• World Net Daily – November 18, 2009
• Science Blog – November 18, 2009
• CNN coverage – November 20, 2009
• JeremiahCry blog – November 24, 2009
• Lost Cause Ministries Blog – November 23, 2009