10 STUDENT SAVED; CHRIST BREAKS RACIAL BARRIERS
Tavoris Uzoigwe (“Tee”), campus minister at the University of Arkansas, Pine Bluff, felt nervous just prior to the fall 2015 semester and for good reason. He was waiting for an all white youth group to arrive and help outreach efforts at the mostly black college. At the time, U.S. racial riots made daily headlines.
Shortly after the First Baptist Church Cabot team arrived at the BCM, Tee had to pick up his wife and family.
“As I was driving away, I prayed, ‘God, I have no idea what’s going to happen. You do what You do.’”
When he returned, he saw something that amazed him. African-American students were intermingling, playing games, having fun.
In one group, he noticed a Cabot youth leader surrounded by three black students.
“How were you able to break barriers?” Tee asked her later.
“I was more concerned with their salvation than my comfort,” she explained.
After Tee spoke on God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness, a student privately admitted that he struggled with pornography. “Your real issue is not porn but not having a relationship with Jesus,” Tee said. “Let’s talk about this sometime.”
“I want to do it right now,” the student said and gave his life to Christ.
On Tuesday the following week, two college students met with Tee and brought two more friends.
“Tell them what you told us at that devotional,” one said. All four became Christians. Then, three more accepted Christ on Wednesday, and those students shared their faith also resulting in 10 professions even before the semester started.
Tee’s own testimony involves Christ’s power to break racial barriers and the witness of others who put aside their own comfort for the Gospel. The African-American boy grew up in what he calls “the hood,” a primarily black neighborhood. He said he never felt love until he met two Little Rock church starters– a 55-year-old Caucasian couple known to him then and now as “Grandma and Grandpa.” “They looked past their own comfort,” he said. That love brought him to faith in Christ.