Pray for Rylei and Students Like Her

Pray with JFA (April):

This month, when Jeremy Gorr showed up in Phoenix to teach a seminar, he was met with a surprise: Rylei, a high school student he helped train in 2017 and 2018 in Colorado, was now a student at Arizona State University and eager to become active changing hearts and minds at ASU. Jeremy’s letter, “Growing Up with Justice For All” tells Rylei’s story. Please pray for Rylei’s conversations at ASU, and pray that God would continue to help Rylei, JFA alumni like her, and JFA’s training team, as all of us speak up this month for forgotten women and children.

We’ve recently conducted outreach events at Univ. of Kansas (4/1-2), Univ. of Northern Colorado (4/8-9), George Mason Univ. in Fairfax, VA (4/15, 4/24), Oklahoma State Univ. (4/23) and Univ. of North Texas (4/24-25). We’re looking forward to seminar and outreach events at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA on May 19-22. Please join us or pray for us!

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Outreach with Cowboys for Life at Oklahoma State University - April 23, 2019

Teach Kids with Our New K-4 Lesson Plan

JFA just released a lesson plan for K-4 elementary school students called, “The Baby’s Heart Beats Like Mine.” Whether you teach kids at home, in a church Sunday School, or in a traditional school environment, be one of the first to try this lesson and give us feedback. During the lesson, K-4 students identify with unborn babies through a series of experiences, including feeling their own heartbeat, seeing the unborn baby in the womb, naming similarities they share with unborn babies, making a bracelet that reminds them of when the heart begins to beat, and narrating what they learned to their parents.

(You’re required to “Sign Up” to access this “Member Only” content. That’s free!)

(Note: This resource was our “Featured Resource” for April 2019 and May 2019.)

Start Conversations with Our New K-4 Lesson Plan

JFA developed our new K-4 Lesson Plan (click here to read a brief description) partly to “drive interest” in discussions about unborn children within churches and other communities. Here’s how we envision that working: You download the lesson plan and teach any group of K-4 kids (or you can teach just one!). During the lesson, students practice sharing what they’ve learned with their parents, and then take home a bracelet and a “Student and Parent Handout” to facilitate those conversations about the unborn child. We anticipate this will not only create conversations among parents and students but also among parents and teachers and others in the community! Help us test this idea to see if it will work.

Next Steps After Seeing UNPLANNED

Due to my busy travel schedule, I was unable to see the movie Unplanned until its fourth week in theaters. Thankfully it was still playing in the city where I live. My wife, Trudy, and I saw it late one Tuesday night.

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Poster artwork used with permission

We were moved by Abby's powerful story of transformation after witnessing an abortion inside the Planned Parenthood where she worked as Director. I thought the movie was hard to watch. It tugged on a lot of emotions as we saw the characters’ stories develop, but I didn’t think it deserved an R-rating. There were only three scenes that had any gruesome or violent content in them.

I did appreciate Ashley Bratcher’s comment regarding the MPAA rating of the film. In an interview with Plugged In (which reviews popular entertainment from a Christian perspective), Ashley, the actress that played Abby Johnson in the film, said,

“Well, first I just want to say that the MPAA gave us the rating only because of abortion… There’s nothing else that warrants the R rating, except for the abortion scenes. They said if you’ll take out the abortion scenes, we’ll drop it to PG-13. Well then that defeats our entire purpose in telling the story.”

As important as it was to see and support the movie, it should be a springboard. It should spur us on to be active and engage our culture. What should that next step be? It depends for each person and what season of life he or she is in. Here are a couple of links to resources with a some ideas:

• www.unplannedfilm.com/resources

• www.priestsforlife.org/10stepstoendabortion

May I suggest one more? Have a conversation today. Having a conversation about abortion may not seem that significant, or you may not feel like you are doing enough. I find on campus that many pro-life people don’t know what their friends think about abortion. Many times their friends hold an opposing view to theirs, and they don’t know it.

“As important as it was to see and support the movie, it should be a springboard. It should spur us on to be active and engage our culture. ”

What does your neighbor, a family member, a friend, or a fellow churchgoer think about abortion? Your influence in that person’s life can effect real change in our world!

Want to learn how to start a conversation? I suggest you try our free Learn at Home Program, which gives you the basics for starting and having a conversation on abortion. Click here to request a Learn at Home packet, and along with it, you will receive two of our new brochures called, “An Invitation to Dialogue about Unintended Pregnancy and Abortion.” (Or, click here for the online version of all four Learn at Home 15-minute lessons.) You can also call our office (316.683.6426) to request Learn at Home materials by phone, learn about upcoming JFA seminars and outreach events, or talk to a JFA trainer directly.

JFA Outreach Featured in The UNC Mirror

This month, JFA held a two-day outreach event (April 8-9) at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado. The student newspaper, The UNC Mirror, covered the event.

Click here to read the article, including an interview with JFA Trainer Grace Fontenot.

Click above to read the full interview and coverage of JFA’s recent outreach at University of Northern Colorado in The UNC Mirror.

Growing Up with Justice For All

One of the most critical parts of our work is training Christians to have conversations about abortion so that they can change people’s hearts and minds. It is always great to see this process working in the real world. I saw it recently at a seminar I gave in Phoenix when one of the participants, Rylei, told me her story.

This is Rylei after a conversation at her first outreach event at Colorado State University in 2017.

We initially trained Rylei as a junior in high school at Faith Christian Academy in 2017. Often when we train Christian students, they tell us that they don’t know who to talk to because all of their friends are pro-life. One of her high school classmates commented, “Because of our culture, I rarely even considered abortion and its morality. This [experience with JFA] really helped show what it is and the impact it really has in America.”

The value of our training, however, lasts throughout these students’ lives. In Rylei’s case, she is now a student at Arizona State University with two pro-choice roommates.

I asked her how her JFA training helped her talk to her pro-choice friends about abortion.

Most of my pro-choice friends haven’t thought through their position very much. I was writing a paper for my class on the pro-life position, using the same arguments you guys gave me. While writing the paper, one of my roommates saw me watching a video of a pro-life person having a conversation with a pro-choice person, and said, “Wow, he is really destroying her pro-choice arguments.” So she’s hearing the arguments as I’m researching my paper. So I find ways to naturally bring up the topic of abortion with them.

Rylei also has a passion for doing outreach at her campus. That passion was born from the outreach she did with us in high school. I am always thinking of how difficult it must be for a high school student like Rylei, who was 16 her first time doing outreach, to engage college students on a difficult topic like abortion.

Rylei’s first exposure to Justice For All was during our seminar at her high school in 2017. Here JFA trainer CK Wisner (center, curly hair) leads her mentor group in interactive exercises and discussion as Rylei (facing CK) listens.

That is what makes outreach such an important part of our training program. Once someone overcomes the initial fear of talking about abortion, this newfound confidence can even last a lifetime. One of her classmates at that first outreach experience said, “Outreach taught me that getting uncomfortable is a really good thing. When God is with you, you don’t have to fear.”

I asked Rylei about her outreach experiences during high school.

I love it. Every time. It is so rewarding, honestly. I know the first time I was super nervous, [and] I got thrown right into a conversation. But after you get through the first conversation I feel like it gets a lot easier.

During her senior year in high school in 2018, Rylei joined us for outreach again, this time at Metro State University in Denver.

Rylei is a living example of our training program in action. Rylei left high school with good arguments for the pro-life position, good skills for conversations about them, and courage to actually have conversations about abortion with those who disagree with her position. She was totally equipped for dealing with her pro-choice roommates and reaching her largely pro-choice campus.

Because of your support of Justice For All, we were able to be there to help Rylei each step of the way. She attended a JFA seminar and then an outreach event at CSU in 2017. She participated again in 2018 at Metro State University. And just last week because of a JFA seminar event, we had the privilege of encouraging her to become active at Arizona State University, where she is now a student. Thank you for partnering with us as we serve students like Rylei, so that they can become effective advocates of their pro-life position to their future pro-choice friends—many of whom will face an unplanned pregnancy in their future.