The Little Evangelist-Wanda Gray Thomas

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Prior to Wanda’s going Home to Heaven we traveled to 93 countries and all USA states, usually with pleasure and God glorifying purpose. Wanda’s heart was focused on people’s eternal destiny and one of the Vice Presidents of Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) nicknamed her the “little evangelist”.

Wanda shared the Good News of Jesus Christ everywhere that we were. Usually on airplanes, she would sit in the middle seat with me on one side or someone that was getting ready to hear about Jesus on the other. Wanda was a gentle, kind, non-aggressive, and soft-spoken woman who offended no one in her evangelistic approach.

We were traveling in Samara, Russia which is known as the “Silicon Valley of Russia”. We were on a bus with others with the mission to have meetings with educators and teachers to encourage them to use Crossroads in their schools. Crossroads is one of those secret weapons that God in His wisdom uses throughout the world. The curriculum focuses on the problems facing school students everywhere-AIDS, alcoholism, drugs, and sexual promiscuity. However, the secret weapon in this curriculum is that it is based on the character of Jesus Christ and presents the gospel in one lesson. The public schools in over 50 nations have adopted Crossroads as part of their curriculum.

We stopped at a McDonalds (yes, in Russia, also) to have lunch. I was standing in line talking with others and I turned to ask Wanda what she would want to eat; she had disappeared. I found her talking with the bus driver through a translator about her favorite subject, Jesus Christ, and His love for all of us. She told me it would have been a shame for that bus driver to have driven us all over Samara without his knowing about the main reason we were there, Jesus.

Another trip we were in L’Viv Ukraine (a city that has become well known because of the 2022 Russian invasion into Ukraine) meeting also with educators and teachers about using the same Christ centered Crossroads curriculum. Representatives of this ministry had tried for two years without success to get this into the schools in this western area of Ukraine. An evening dinner for 135 teachers was organized to try another approach.  I usually was the one to do the public speaking, but Wanda felt God wanted her to do it because she had been a schoolteacher and could better communicate and relate with them. In her speech she started with the fact that all schoolteachers were truth-seekers and wanted to teach truth. She then talked for about 20 minutes about Jesus and his claim, “I am the Truth’. The Superintendent of Schools, who had been the primary authority to have blocked the Jesus curriculum, set across our table from me. She was a stern heavy set strongly built lady that reminded me of an Olympic shot putter. Near the end of Wanda’s presentation, she turned away from me with tears coming down her face to the wall behind her. She said something in Ukrainian that I ask a translator, “What did she say?” The Superintendent said, “We need to get Jesus into our schools.” The next day she called to tell the ministry representatives that she was opening the schools under her authority to the Jesus curriculum. We later found out that it had been placed in all schools in Ukraine.

These are just a few of the stories about how God can use each of us for His glory, even a schoolteacher from Oklahoma.

Wanda asked that the following be inscribed on our tombstone.

“BE MY WITNESSES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD  ACTS 1:8”