New York City Evangelism: Support Letter

Hello friends and family!

What follows here is a slightly edited version of a letter I sent out about a month ago.

This is a scan of the
bookmark I included
in the letter I sent out.

This current semester is my last semester at Cedarville University! God has used this place and the people here to guide and shape me to be more like Him, and I look forward to see what he has in store for me after graduation. But in between me and graduation sits about five research papers, around 20 novels, and a senior English presentation. As of right now, there are only 64 days until graduation! At the moment, I’m still not completely sure where God is leading me next, but I’ll likely start with a summer job so I can start paying off my college loans. After that, I would like to get a job in my field and perhaps one day live and work in England for a couple years. It is also a dream of mine to one day study for a couple semesters at Oxford while staying at C. S. Lewis' house!

This semester at Cedarville I’ve been given the opportunity by the Global Outreach Department here to minister to the homeless in New York City during spring break. Tomorrow morning a team of seven people (myself included) the team and I will drive to northern New Jersey where we will be staying. Our ministry will be based out of Hawthorne Gospel Church, the church my dad grew up with. The church is about half an hour away from the parsonage where my family and I lived until I was nine, before we moved to California. The church is also only about 15 minutes from one of my friend's houses and is also fairly close to where my Uncle and Aunt live.

Our trip is only a week long, but it will certainly be a busy one, and we will need a lot of prayer. We’ll spend most of the time ministering to the homeless at New York City Rescue Mission (located in Manhattan I believe), but we'll also minister to the youth at Hawthorne Gospel Church one night there as well. I’m still not completely sure of all that I’ll be doing specifically in these places, but I believe God will use this time to work in the lives of the people of New York, as well as my own life. While the team and I are in New York and New Jersey this week be praying for safety for all of us. Pray that none of us will get lost, as I am often prone to do, and pray that we have safe travels. Pray also that God will work through us and in us as we do His work in the city. Pray that God will work in the hearts of the people we interact with, including each other on the team. I would also appreciate prayer for me specifically that I would be able to take my mind off my busy semester during the trip. This semester is shaping up to be the hardest one I’ve had this year at Cedarville, so actually if you could pray for that as well I would very grateful. Maybe just pray for me to stay motivated and focused to get everything done, because I’m getting very anxious to be done with school. Your prayerful support is greatly needed and greatly appreciated for the success of this trip.

I will try to post a couple updates on here during the trip if I have time; but if not I'll definitely be posting something about the trip once I'm back here. I'll also try to send out report letters to those people who received my first letter as well; I just hope I don’t get too swamped with papers and reading once I get back.

Thank you again for your support, and may God bless you!

In Christ,

Michael J. Newman

A Voice from the Past

                It’s mine.

                A few months ago, my family found a letter in the house that I wrote to myself, with specific instructions to not open until August 10, 2014 at 12:15pm, at least that’s what the outside of the letter said, as you can read here:

Part of the address label for the letter I wrote to myself

I didn’t end up actually seeing the letter itself until around October 2014, but it didn’t matter too much. But I found the contents of the letter itself somewhat amusing. This is really what I was like ten years ago, because I actually wrote this letter to my future self. Because of my fascination with time-travel, it makes sense that I would do something awesome like this, though I believe it was actually for some kind of school project. Anyway, a photograph of the letter is included below:

The letter I wrote to my future self

Thankfully my handwriting then was legible, but if you can’t make it out it, this is what it says:

"Dear Michael James Newman,

                I am in 7^th Grade, I’m 12 years old, my favorite color is blue, my favorite movies are the Indiana Jones Movies, my favorite book Series is the Daystar Voyages. I am very artistic and I want to be someone who works with Movies or an actor. I have a Twin brother named Joseph and two younger sisters named Debra and Rachel. My Family has a dog named Bella and 2 cats named Toulouse and Whiskers. We have a pool with a diving board and a slide. My address is 425 Sycamore drive Exeter, C.A. 93221. Todays date is 8/10/04 right now it’s 12:15 PM. Well see ya later (when you Look in the Mirror!)

                Sincierly, Michael James Newman"

I’m not sure why I addressed myself using my full name; maybe I thought I would be calling myself something different in the future. 12 years old seems so young – I wasn’t even in high school yet. Blue is still a favorite color of mine but I wouldn’t call it my absolute favorite. I do still love the Indiana Jones movies (yes, even the fourth movie, which hadn’t come out yet at the time of the original letter). I have many other favorite books now, but I may someday go back and re-read those books, which I loved at the time. I still believe I am artistic, and I still envision myself one day working with movies in some capacity. I find it funny that I told my future self the names of my siblings; I’m not quite sure why I did that. Sadly, the note about the family pets is no longer true. Toulouse and Whiskers may yet be alive, but we never see them anymore. Our family now has three dogs: Polar, Honey, and Abby; and three cats: Paws, Oreo, and Arwen. I honestly don’t know why it was so important that I tell my future self that my family has a pool. It was also not necessary for me to include my home address. That’s still where I live (when I’m not at school), but I guess my past self couldn’t have known that. The note at the very end about seeing myself in the mirror in the future was particularly creepy, because that exactly something I would do. I almost couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror afterwards, because doing so would fulfill my own prophecy.

I’m not sure why I originally wrote that letter to my future self; though I expect it was more as a cool, neat, time-travel thing, rather than a word of advice from my 12-year-old self.

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of time-travel (I went on an extended tangent talking about it in my review of X-Men: Days of Future Past). Though I guess writing a letter to my future self isn’t true time-travel, because the letter travels at the same speed through time that I do. It would also not be considered time-travel for me to write a reply letter to my past self, because at the moment there is no way I could do that; I’m also not sure what the consequences would be if I succeeded.

Anyway, the main purpose of this post is so that I can have a link to it in my life-update post which I should be finished in the next day or so. I did not post the link to this post on Facebook, so if you found this anyway, congratulations! You are more of a stalker than I realized! Maybe I should have considered removing my home address from the letter when I posted it on here…