Lasting Impact

     As some of you may know, I work from inside the Awana Clubs headquarters in Streamwood. Last month, I was walking through a hallway at the office, and a woman who works for Awana that I had not ever met before stopped me. She asked, "Are you Matt Armstrong?" I said that I was. "From Crossroads Kids Club?" she continued. Again, I answered yes, but by now I was wondering where this conversation was heading. She said that she wanted to share a story with me. The Sunday before, there had been a baptism at her church, and a 17-year-old girl was baptized. Apparently the girl's testimony was that she had come to know the Lord through her time at Crossroads Kids Club years ago. I found out the girl's name and found her on Facebook. I told her that I heard she had been baptized and mentioned Crossroads. She quickly wrote back, "Yes! Crossroads was life-changing." I also learned that her parents have been attending church for a while as well.
     We discovered in a survey of Crossroads students that 48.6% placed their trust in Jesus as their Savior through Crossroads. What is cool about what happened last month is that it gets behind the numbers and allows us to see a student who heard the gospel in her public school, came to trust Jesus as a result, and is following him years down the road. This story is the goal of everything we are trying to do at Crossroads Kids Club: A person—a family—changed and changing through Jesus and connected to a local church.