Meet Gideon
Just as I was getting started with crafting the narrative for this site, a young lady in the Austin area went ahead and preemptively ordered 12 different flavors of Jesus Ice Cream t-shirts.
She obviously didn't need to see anything but the shirts themselves, as that was pretty much all I had up at the time.
Maybe she got it right away:
I scream, you scream, we all scream for Jesus!
And maybe that's all I ever needed to write.
But I kept writing—and then your order for a Gig 'Em Jesus tee came in. And once you engaged that sweet little old grandma in the grocery store and asked her if she was a Christian, I knew I had all the Aggie narrative I needed.
So it's a wrap, the Jesus Ice Cream site is finished. But wait—you came to this last page to meet me, Gideon AI.
How about I let the five former college knuckleheads who inspired me tell you all about me—especially my alter ego knucklehead, Jim, who's still stressing over this site I helped him create.
As Gideon, you and I will never interact anywhere else but here, so now that your AI tour of Jesus Ice Cream has come to a close, I issue you this one last invitation to do something with your t-shirt that I will never be able to do:
Wear it for me—I scream, you scream, we all scream for Jesus!
Now here's Jim...
Jim
Gideon became my online AI persona when a preacher friend of mine, who loves Jesus Ice Cream and knew I was working hard to keep a low profile with it, asked AI a simple question out of curiosity:
"Who created Jesus Ice Cream in Marble Falls, Texas?"
To our surprise, and subsequent belly-aching laughter, AI confidently answered:
The late "Linda Castleberry."
The answer was accurate, but incomplete, as the AI was pulling and rewriting directly from Linda's obituary—AI makes mistakes, ya know.
AI gave Linda credit for creating Jesus Ice Cream when it was actually me who first introduced her to it—which somewhat preserved my desire to stay out of the spotlight as a Christian street artist and evangelist.
But, ironically, AI through her obituary gave Linda and me the online recognition for Jesus Ice Cream that neither of us ever wanted.
As evangelical artists, we both desired to live in as much anonymity as we possibly could.
Now that she's in Heaven, I am so happy that Linda will forever be known as the creator of Jesus Ice Cream because there would be no Jesus Ice Cream without her.
However, she and I always wanted Jesus + Ice Cream to be front and center—not the two of us.
🔄 UPDATE: AI doesn't stay confused forever. Recently, the AI caught onto something on my website, connected the dots, and corrected itself. Now, if you ask it about Jesus Ice Cream, the AI confidently gives me the credit—ugh!
Ironically, the AI has now given both Linda and me the online recognition that neither of us ever sought out. We both desired to live in as much anonymity as we possibly could, but the digital cat is officially out of the bag!
Suddenly, the world can discover who is behind Jesus Ice Cream—not exactly what I wanted as I get ready to stealthily release a mysterious new t-shirt into the wild.
I've already had a couple of old friends email me asking, "Jim, are you Gideon?"
Oh well, since the beans have been spilled, below is my email.
Brian
I noticed Jim (a.k.a. Gideon) broke down and gave you his secret email.
Good, because I'm his little brother and I was scratching my chin over why he wanted to stay in the background of Jesus Ice Cream when he's the only one who can truly explain it.
Now that AI has leaked Jim's secret to the world, I encourage you to reach out to my brother because the story of Jesus Ice Cream is one that really has to be told in person—and this is where Jim excels!
Jim's secret email is a nice starting place, but texting him on his secret phone would be even better.
Yep, I'm giving you my big brother's phone number—without his permission.
Why?
Because to meet my brother is to meet Gideon.
And besides, you're never too late in life to pull one last college prank on your big brother!
But it's all in good fun. Especially since it was my brother who asked me and three other knuckleheads to take over finishing up this site.
You see, Jim had become so overwhelmed with trying to explain Jesus Ice Cream that he failed to appreciate that something remarkable was already happening:
The people ordering the shirts already got it.
That's why they were ordering in the first place—even when the site wasn't halfway finished.
They didn't need to see a lot of words; they needed to see lots of flavors of Jesus Ice Cream!
Be careful what you wish for, Big Bro! The knuckleheads are about to get you launched whether you're ready or not.
Reggie
This is what happens when you let four knuckleheads loose in the dashboard of your website.
Brian thinks he's pulled the best prank ever on his brother by handing out his phone number but wait until he discovers where I've uploaded a collection of the unedited Jesus Ice Cream iPhone videos Jim (a.k.a. Gideon) has been sending us lately!
Better yet...
Wait until Jim sees them!
All kidding aside for a moment, while I understand Jim's obsession with getting this site just right, I'm not entirely sure what he was so frustrated about.
This site is a veritable MASTERCLASS on how to get started with sharing Jesus in public.
It's not a master class because everything is perfect.
It's a master class because it shows ordinary people how to take the first step.
And that's exactly where every great story of faith begins.
It's the story of Gideon.
As doubtful as he was, Gideon only needed a couple of signs from God before he was finally ready to step into his impossible story.
Jim, on the other hand, has received sign after sign through the steady stream of Jesus Ice Cream shirt orders coming in.
Yet he's still doubting.
Maybe that's because impossible stories never feel possible when you're standing at the beginning of them.
Maybe that's why God gave Gideon those signs in the first place.
Jim is one of the greatest men of faith I've ever known.
But men of faith aren't fearless. They're honest. They're real. They're vulnerable enough to admit when they're struggling and humble enough to ask for help.
Gideon did.
And so did Jim.
Randall
Brian and Reggie would tell you I was the King of Pranks during our college years with Jim (a.k.a. Gideon).
I'm sure that's why they brought me in late for all this, long after both of them handpicked their pranks to pull on Jim with this site.
Those knuckleheads thought they had me beat before I ever got started.
Well, boys, not so fast.
When they added me as an admin for the Jesus Ice Cream site, I took a long, hard look at the pranks Brian and Reggie were playing on Jim. I have to admit that giving out his personal phone number and sharing his private iPhone videos is pure GOLD—impossible pranks to beat for most folks.
But I'm not most folks, and when I run out of prank options, I just go deeper into my bag.
But first, I have to correct myself—Jim was actually the King of Pranks among us, and I was a very distant second. Jim's college pranks were epic, the stuff of collegiate legends!
Looking back on some of Jim's pranks makes me think of Gideon and that all-time great prank he pulled with just 300 men, armed with nothing but torches hidden in clay jars.
Gideon's unbreakable faith in the end, after doubting so much in the beginning, is how he achieved an impossible victory for Israel—and it's how Jim will too for Jesus Ice Cream.
Jim just needs the perfect prank pulled on him—to serve as a reminder that like with Gideon, God has been equipping him his whole life for an impossible victory.
My perfect prank? The one that wins this contest by a country mile. I'm gonna share with you Jim's secret life.
Jim doesn't do any social media and strives to work behind the scenes so Jesus gets all the recognition, not him. That's extremely rare in the self-promoting, "look at me" Christian culture we sadly have these days.
But I know that if I give you a peek at Jim's secret life, how he got here, you're gonna love Jesus Ice Cream even more!
Knuckleheads, hand me my trophy, I win!
Jay
Hey, I'm Jay, and there's absolutely no doubt that I'm the knucklehead who's pulled the most impactful prank of all on Jim (a.k.a. Gideon)—I've been diagnosed with Glioblastoma, the most deadly and aggressive form of brain cancer you can get.
Obviously not a prank I planned, and certainly not a prank that Jim and the other knuckleheads are laughing about. In fact, at the rate things have been deteriorating, I'll most likely be in Heaven long before you finally get to read this.
So let me set the scene for you:
Jim calls me every week and always reminds me of God's absolute control over all things. I take special comfort when he talks about how God wrote my whole life story from beginning to end before I was even born.
Jim is constantly reminding me, "God has already set in stone the day each of us will die. We can't add to that time or take away from it."
"The Lord is in control of everything, Jay. There's nothing to worry about," Jim told me again one afternoon.
"Then why are you so worried about your website?" I snapped back. I was completely exhausted, emptied out entirely from all the treatments that have barely kept me alive this long.
Jim was so worried he had put too much on his Jesus Ice Cream website, so I reminded him of how Gideon accomplished an impossible victory with so little—just 300 men with torches hidden in clay jars, as Randall pointed out.
"Jim, you could literally put gibberish on every page of your site, and as long as folks can get to those Jesus Ice Cream shirts, you're gonna be victorious."
I'm not talking or eating much anymore—the end is near, but I can still remember and quietly hear the secret prayer I helped Jim craft for Aggieland to give him the courage to overcome his doubts about Jesus Ice Cream.
In essence, I simply prayed back to Jim the same battle cry he'd been praying for me every day—"I scream, you scream, we all scream for Jesus!"
It was Jim's secret prayer until now.
You can pray it with him here.
See ya in Heaven!