Post by messengermicah on Sept 28, 2009 18:28:24 GMT -5
Friday September 18, 2009-George Mason University-Fairfax, Virginia: I decided to head back to GMU today, since I was unable to preach at University of Maryland because of the rain and President Obama’s appearance on campus the previous day, and the free speech area already reserved by other groups on this day.
It was a very overcast morning as Sister Elizabeth and I drove to campus but it was not raining. This campus is noticeably slower on Fridays with fewer cars in the parking lot and less students walking around.
As we left the parking garage and were heading towards the free speech area a student spotted us and took off running to tell other students we were there.
I began preaching in the free speech spot at noon. Gradually a crowd began to form that grew to around 50-70 for most of the meeting. The students are now much more tame and civil due to the previous week of preaching. For the most part they kept a distance, asked good questions and listened fairly well.
The sky cleared up, the sun came out and it ended up being a nice day. At one point a student kept riding around me on a bicycle and interrupting me with a bullhorn but eventually left.
After about an hour I moved onto the stairs and faced the group of 30-50. I preached and answered questions until around 1:30 PM. At that point most of the crowd had left and around 10-20 students remained.
From 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM, I taught and answered questions of the students who remained. Most of this time seemed to be very fruitful as the students were attentive and sincere. I seemed to have made friends with one atheist student who kept coming each day to listen and ask questions. He was very reasonable and civil each day.
We left the campus around 2:30 PM.