Open air on a Navy War Ship

Here is a testimony of Ps2(SW) Travis M. Birkhead . He is in the United States Navy stationed on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN-69) . If you ever tried to share your faith but something always came up or happened. This story with encourage you.

Travis Reads....
I'm in the Military (Navy) and we got underway for deployment on 3 Oct 2007. Well, that was just the beginning of a great adventure. I despised having to leave my pregnant wife behind and go out to the middle of the Ocean for 8 months at a time, but I end this deployment praising God that I was here. At the beginning of the cruise I started writing a book on evangelism because I was convinced the church just needed to be set on fire. I wasn't trying to write a "how to manual" as much as I wanted to just get people involved and let them figure it out as they try. I have been doing street evangelism since i was 16 years old and I had found the Roman road worked fine to lead sinners to Christ. However, I found out from reading Way of the Master exactly why I had so many still borns on my hands.

Well, back to the Navy. I was trying to write this book and a friend of mine happens to be reading "an excellent book" that he recomends that I read too. So, I read it and everything that I wanted to do by setting people on fire was right there in that book. So, I stopped writing my book and started reading more and more of Ray's books. We ordered Season 1 and 2 of the TV series for Way of the Master and watched them. We ordered several tracts and started passing them out and using the Law to bring the conviction of sin. Finally, we started teaching a class in the Chapel on Friday nights for Evangelism. We use the videos from the TV Series as the platform for teaching the class. Well, we (when I say "we", I mean me and the friend that gave me the book) had a strong conviction that we weren't reaching enough people.

There are 6,000 people onboard and we (the entire class) had barely spoken to 600 people in the few months since stating the class. There were just too many people transferring and seperating without hearing the Gospel. Something drastic needed to be done. I got online and ordered Ray's book "springboards for budding preachers /open air preaching" And i enrolled in the online school. When the book got here I realized that it had a DVD counterpart. So, I ordered the DVD (takes a littler over 3 weeks for any shipment to get here and sometimes longer). So, while we are waiting, we are becoming more and more upset about the urgency of how people need to hear the good news. While we are waiting we start devicing our own plans for how to draw a crowd of people. We decided that we would get a guitar and play some music on the mess decks during the evening while eveyrone else is out there playing board games and cards. So, we get together and practice our music and I put together a sermon for preaching. Here is where things start to get exciting because Satan started trying to interfere and God always made the work of Satan a magnificent thing. Allow me to explain.

The night before we go into the messdecks the "G" string of the guitar broke. So, we start to figure out how to improvise. It's not like there is a guitar store out here in the Persian gulf that we can just pull alongside of and buy more strings. So, what did we do? We got another cord (not sure what kind of cord) and just tightened it up until it was in tune with the "G". That same day when the string broke, we had an UNREP (bringing on supplies) so we got a huge shipment of mail. My DVD had arrived and I watched the entire thing in one sitting (all 4 episodes). I was ready and so were the other three guys with me.

The Next day the heat is on and the anticipation is high because none of us have done Open Air preaching yet. The night was upon us and we went to a quiet catwalk to pray. We prayed and then headed to the AFT messdecks. (The aft messdecks is where everyone gathers to play games and hang out). Well, the master-at-arms tells everyone to leave because they are closing the bay for training. WHAT A LET DOWN!!! So, we asked them if the FORWARD messdecks would be open. They said to talk to the Master-at-Arms in the forward mess. So, we walk up there and a Movie is playing in the forward mess, what a huge distraction. We ask the Master at arms if we can play some music and speak for a few minutes. He said, "Yeah, and if you want you can unplug the TV because the movie is about 2 minutes from being over." AWESOME! The difference between the dynamics of the forward mess and the AFT mess is, the people that are in the forward mess are still eating. There is typically eating going on at that time in the forward mess while games are going on in the AFT mess. So, we already have an audience of about 250 people just sitting down eating chow! (Isn't God good). We unplugged the TV and decided to start in the Natural with some music. We had played for our shipmates and right in the middle of the second song one of the Master-at-Arms tells me they are closing the bay in 10 minutes...SO, we stopped singing after that song and I started preaching. Satan obviously didn't want me to preach so he sent a 1st class my way to tell me to shut up and leave. You see, my rank is Second Class Petty Officer and the man that told me to be quiet was a First Class Petty Officer (one rank higher than me). This man had authority over me, but I had the authority of God. So, I said to him, "I'm only here because I care about these people, I'm not mad, but rather I love them." He said, "They are eating and you are distracting them" I replied, "That TV distracts me everyday when I'm eating, but I don't get mad or complain or try to turn off the TV" He didn't care, "You need to stop speaking" So, being in God's authority I told him, "You need to speak with Chaplain Potter because as far as I'm concerned, he said this wouldn't be a problem as long as the Master-At-Arms [those in charge of that space] didn't care. (the Chaplain is an officer and out ranks the first class... I appealed to higher authority). So, this persistent heckler decides to get the crowd involved which was perfect. He said, "No one wants to hear you.

DOES ANYONE WANT TO HEAR HIM SPEAK" A guy sitting close by, "It doesn't matter he has a right to speak" A girl in the back, "LET HIM SPEAK"I didn't know any of these people, but they all wanted me to finish. I had already laid the Law on their hearts and was about to go into the message of the Cross when the 1st class had tried to stop me. Some of these people were convicted of sin and were waiting for the answer, so they spoke up and put that messenger of satan to shame. So, after the entire crowd rejected him, he just walked away embarrased. I didn't have to do anything because he embarrased himself.I finished the gospel and we passed out tracts and spoke with people one on one. After it was all done, I found out that one of the guys in the mess decks went to the food Service Officer (the one guy that would have been able to say leave and I would have had to pack up and leave without another word because of his authority and responsibility over all in charge of the food operations and spaces).But thanks be to God.

My job in the Navy is to do pay. I have done the FSO's pay personally for over a year. He knows me by face and speaks to me all the time always asking about his pay and always satisfied with the service I give to him. The Food Service Officer told the guy to get out of his office and not to talk to him anymore. He said to the guy, "If you have a problem speak to the Master-At-Arms" So, the indignant eater went to one of the many Master-at-Arms and complained. It just happened that the one he went to to complain was a girl in our Evangelism class. She just blew him off! And the rest of the night was a success story.

The message in this story is: Trust in God. Satan tried four times to keep us down; a bad guitar string, mess decks closing down, a hasty 1st class, and an indignant person eating their food. But in it all, the events created a crowd many times larger than what we could have hoped for if we would have followed our plans and without demonic interferance. We hoped to draw a crowd of 20 or 30 people, but we ended up speaking to a crowd of about 250 people. God is good and he works all things for the good of those who love him. Have courage and go preach the Good news.

PS2(SW) Birkhead, Travis M USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN-69)
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