Ambassadors Academy 13 Testimonial

What follows is a testimony by Debra Fuhrman who attended Living Waters Ambassadors Academy 13 with us last weekend in Los Angeles. Debra often hits the streets with us in Dallas/Fort Worth as well as participates in Project Ezra regularly. I hope you will be encouraged by her testimony and will consider applying to attend an Ambassadors Academy later this year. If you want to go, please fill out your application ASAP. The April, May and June academies are already full. Living Waters is only accepting applications for July and August (as of the time of this writting).

Day One: I arrived in Burbank on Wednesday and spent the afternoon shopping in Downtown Disney. When I got to the hotel, I met my roommate, Elsie Allen, who also is from Fort Worth. At registration we received a bag with some great evangelism material. We heard from Tony Miano and EZ from Living Waters. We then had a team meeting to introduce ourselves to the others in our team and to meet the leaders, Brett Coronado and Liz Ebert.

Day Two: We were indoors all day for our training seminar on evangelism and open-air preaching. We heard from EZ, Stuart Scott and Mark Spence. We also got to hear from Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. Tony Miano gave us a wonderful talk about not quitting. We ended the evening with an awesome worship time with the entire group.

Day Three: We took a trip to the Living Waters headquarters. The building used to be a mortuary but has been turned into offices. The upstairs was the living quarters of the mortuary so offices are kind of small especially when they turn a closet into an office. As we were in the Board Room, we were told that the four chandeliers in there was the earthquake alarm. We had a good laugh on that one. Fortunately, they stayed very still! We visited everyone’s offices and got to chat with folks that were working there. We saw where they shoot against the green screen. Ray Comfort’s office was quite entertaining with the pictures and knick knacks he had. We saw the infamous rubber band ball. This ball was finally allowed to be bounced outside but ended up through the glass window. I’m guessing it’s retired from outdoor activities.

After the tour, we went outside the building and folks were given the opportunity to get up on the box and do some preaching. It was awesome and inspiring to watch them do that.

Our next stop was Hollywood. This was the weekend of the Academy Awards and the city was in full swing to set it up. This was also our first opportunity to go out and talk to folks one on one and do some open-air preaching. Hollywood is definitely a different of animal than what we have here in Texas. Folks are dressed up as movie characters hoping for a monetary donation for having their photo taken, music stars-wannabes are handing out CDs of their music stating they’re going to be a hit soon, and people were selling tours of the Hollywood area. The public are inundated with handouts and pamphlets at every turn. We were told it would be difficult to hand out tracts to them because of this – hence, Tony’s message “Don’t Quit!” With that in mind, I started handing out tracts to folks and got a lot of rejections but I also got more folks taking tracts than I anticipated. Glory to God!

Jaylene from Living Waters joined me as we went up and down the street to find folks to talk to. We met this one gentleman and had a conversation with him. In the midst of him telling us about Catholics in Germany and how the government takes care of tithing with your paycheck, I did manage to tell him the gospel. He also left with a couple of our tracts. We also spoke with a homeless man who said he didn’t want to go to hell. I’m not sure if he totally understood the message but we gave him the gospel as well.

I finally got up on the box in Hollywood. My preaching was very short. I want to work on being able to put more words into my preaching. With God’s help I was able to get my message out – both bad news and good news!

Elsie and I spent some time handing out tracts together. We spoke with a couple of women. One said she was a Christian and the other said she was agnostic. The one who said she was a Christian listened to our message. The other woman seemed a bit antsy but both listened.

After Hollywood, we traveled on the bus to Glendale, CA. There’s a lot of stores there as well as restaurants. Our only restriction was that we couldn’t go in the mall area to hand out tracts but we can tract folks as they went into the mall area and as they came out. I went out with Elsie and Liz to walk around to find people to talk to. We came up to a bus stop and found two young men sitting there as well as another couple. I struck up a conversation with the two men and Liz went to talk to the couple. The two men were very cordial and we went through the Good Person test. They both failed as we all do. I then told them the gospel and they seemed very open to it.

Back at the mall area, a box was set up for anyone who wanted to open-air preach. Elsie and I decided to tag team together. Elsie is a former Fort Worth police officer so we used the term Bad Cop Good Cop. I decided I would be the bad cop and she would be the good cop. I got up on the box and gave the bad news that everyone will die one day and if you die in your sins you’ll end up in hell. Elsie got up and gave the gospel of God’s grace if you repent of your sins and put your trust in Jesus.

Day Four: Today we’re going to Huntington Beach. This is where a lot of video of Ray Comfort is done when he does his open-air preaching. Due to the weather we almost didn’t go there but we received the go ahead to come in. It was windy and cold there. I went with Elsie and Liz down the pier to hand out tracts and to find people to talk to. We stopped to talk to a woman with a child in a stroller. Her husband had gone back to the car to get a blanket. As we were finishing up witnessing to her, her husband showed up. Liz offered them a CD and DVD but the husband shut her down and refused to take anything. We were grateful that we were able to talk to his wife at least.

That afternoon we were treated to watch a gentleman present the gospel using a sketch board painting. It was amazing watching his presentation. He was able to engage the crowd there. I’m going to look into using that medium to proclaim the gospel. We then got to hear Ray Comfort preach. After him we saw Chad and EZ come up to preach as well as Mark Spence. It was awesome to see these seasoned evangelists share the gospel and to watch how they interact with the public.

At the end of the day we met on the steps overlooking the beach and listened to Tony. We then had our group picture taken. Elsie started singing Amazing Grace and everyone joined in. It was so, so awesome sitting there with the rest of the Academy folks singing Amazing Grace on the beach and watch the public that were walking by look up at us. Kind of our last hoorah before leaving them.

That evening was our final time together as a group. We were given certificates by our team leaders. It was really bittersweet. I really hated to leave as we were making new friends there and learning new techniques but I was also excited to get back home so I can try out some of the things I had learned. God has us where he wants us to be. We need to be able and willing to do his work where we are and when he calls us to. And I also learned to DON’T QUIT!!

You know…serving God is an exciting adventure. Don’t miss out.

To God all the Glory!