A fishing seminar by professional anglers as part of the Team Jesus Ministries (TJM) Mobile 2000 Fishing Weekend May 20-21 included tips on catching the right fish but also featured special testimonies.
Anglers Shaw Grigsby, Jay Yelas, Ricky McFarlin and Dalton Bobo shared what lures to use and other fishing techniques. The four men, all Christians, also used their time to share their testimonies. Some of the pros also visited Mobile area churches Sunday morning.
“If we had a fishing seminar with these pros, normally, to hear these men do this kind of a seminar, it costs $75 to $80, but we charged only $10, because we wanted to get Mom, Dad, the kids there together,” said Terry Chupp, founder/president of TJM, based in Grayson, Ga., who preached after the pros shared their testimony.
About 500 people came to hear the professional seminar event.
Sharing how vendors usually drop sample lures into fishermen’s bags during tournaments, Chupp said he once placed a New Testament in Grigsby’s bag. On another occasion he dropped an audiotape of another bass pro who had already come to know the Lord.
Chupp said he began placing his gifts in Grigsby’s bag about 10 years ago, with Chupp eventually praying with Grigsby to receive Jesus.
Real winner
Today, Grigsby stands tall as a Christian and as a professional bass angler. A superstar of pro bass fishing, he is the fourth largest money winner of all time in professional bass fishing with the Bass Anglers Sportsmen Society.
In the last three months he has won two of the top 100 events in the world in Bassmaster, the world’s largest and most prestigious fishing organization.
“People were just glued to their seats to see what these experts had to say. Most of the people attending were very serious about fishing,” said Lambert Mims, a member of the local committee working with TJM to organize the event.
Fifty-one of the 500 or so attending the Sunday afternoon event opened their hearts to Jesus, accepting Him as Savior.
Though nothing in this world can equal the insurmountable gift of God’s love through Jesus, a part of the fishing seminar included a Triton boat give-away. The winner of the 22-foot Triton bass boat with a 225-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor and OMC trolling motor was a 6-year-old boy, Colby Verdin.
As it turns out, Colby wanted to attend the kids’ fishing day in the park on
Saturday, but he could not. So that he could still be a part of things, his dad told him that he would take him to the pro seminar Sunday afternoon. (TAB)
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