A small hatchback sputtered through the dark campus streets of Louisiana State University. Its headlights caught a foreboding, 18-foot banner stretched high across the street: "Steve Is Dying of AIDS."

Inside LSU's Union Theater, 700 students came to hear Steve's story, knowing little more about this speaker than did the driver of the passing car.

"By all medical standards, I should be dead," says the 22-year-old standing on the stage. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "My T-cell count right now is 140 [AIDS is diagnosed at 200 or less]. In the viral-load test, everything over 1,000 is high and bad; my viral load is 700,000. My liver is practically gone. It is almost all scar tissue. Doctors don't know why I am alive."

An uncomfortable cough broke the silence of the theater, filled with young, seemingly immortal college students. Outside, a withered, brown camellia blossom fell to the ground.

Speaking from his own experience, Steve Sawyer confronts audiences with the reality of death while offering the promise of eternal hope. He has carried that message to 100 college campuses around the world, challenging 16,000 students last year alone to follow Jesus Christ.

A hemophiliac at birth, the young introvert from Wolfeboro, NH, received contaminated blood in the early 1980s during a blood transfusion. He contracted HIV and hepatitis C, which later developed into AIDS and cirrhosis of the liver. Not yet a Christian, the high-school student dealt with his impending death through fits of rage, punching furniture and cursing.

Because of Steve's hemophilia, Steve Sawyer Sr. had always thought of himself, his wife and his namesake as a three-man team against the world. AIDS changed all that. "Stevie started being angry every day," said his dad in a radio interview. "He was starting to deal with his own mortality. We didn't know what to do."

The solution began with a last-ditch prayer. Though Steve Jr. didn't believe in God, he had nowhere else to turn, and asked for a little heavenly help. Within weeks, his health seemed restored.

But it wasn't until several years later, through the influence of a Christian roommate at college and attending conferences sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ, that Steve met Jesus and began a personal relationship with God. Excited and changed, Steve told his mom and dad and three brothers. Eventually, each surrendered their lives to the Sovereign Lord.

In the winter of his sophomore year, Steve's health plunged. Doctors gave him three to six months to live, a time Steve refers to as "the first three days of the rest of my life."

Armed with that death sentence, Steve dropped out of college and began telling people that they could know God personally, that they could face eternity with confidence and peace. With the encouragement and help of Dave Thom, a Campus Crusade staff member who had become a good friend, Steve held a campus-wide meeting in 1995 at his former school, Curry College in Boston. For the first time, he went public about having AIDS. And for the first time, he led a room full of listeners in a prayer to meet their Savior. Now it has become a lifestyle.

The stage is nothing new to Steve: As an 11-year-old he worked with a traveling circus doing street magic and face painting, and he performed in high-school and college plays. He sharpened his message and delivery at Campus Crusade's Communication Center during a five-week public-speaking course.

"Crusade is a great way to get on a campus. My ministry, my target audience, is college students," explains Steve. Although not a staff member with Campus Crusade, he works closely with the Campus Ministry: for instance, staff member Chris Grella serves as Steve's travel coordinator. That's because Steve and the Campus Ministry share a common purpose.

"I've been on staff 20 years," says Campus Ministry staff member Mike Adamson, "and I have not seen anyone connect with university students the way Steve connects with them. It really is supernatural."

Everywhere he goes, Steve sees results, or reads about them later in letters. One student from Wisconsin wrote, "I want you to know that I said the prayer [of salvation] tonight. . . . you said that if you affected one person tonight, everything in your life would be worth it. You affected me."

"This is what God has given me to do," says Steve, his youthful voice quivering. "My calling was to have AIDS and share the gospel through AIDS."

And for the last three years, Steve has served that call, long outliving his doctor's predictions. But he's counted the cost, and loneliness is a big part of the bill. "The last thing on your mind, you would think, is that with 500 people standing up and cheering for you, you [might] feel alone," he says. "I'm having people I don't even know coming up and giving me hugs, or saying thanks. [But] all the excitement, all the popularity, all that has kind of worn off. It wore off two years ago. Now it is ministry." Steve becomes quiet for a moment. "And that doesn't even begin to cover never being able to have a family," he continues, "which I pretty much have come to terms with. But it is not easy."

Steve lives with more than emotional pain. On one very typical morning he woke up in his New Hampshire home, scheduled to speak that evening at Princeton University. "My ankles were swollen. I couldn't stand up. I had to pack, crawling around my room trying to get clothes in. Trying to get into the shower but I couldn't stand up, so I had to push myself up on the toilet. I'm not as strong as I once was, so it's hard to lift my whole body up." Despite his mother's pleas for him to cancel the talk, Steve wanted to keep his commitment, and flew to the campus anyway. By God's grace, that night he felt fine.

His drive, his passion, is obeying God's call. "I don't know how other people define passion," says Mike Adamson, "but when I see a 22-year-old kid whose joints ache, and who is lonely but gets on a plane, week after week, sometimes showing up and laying in a bed with a fever, then getting up to speak and going back to bed--if that is not passion, I don't know what is."

Steve wouldn't call himself passionate. In his mind, he's just living for what matters. "Life is like a dot on a line that runs for eternity in both directions," Steve explains. "Whatever is happening on that dot seems huge, whether it is AIDS, cirrhosis, getting bad grades or being lonely. But when you step back and recognize you don't have just that dot, you have the whole line, [then] everything in that dot--AIDS, whatever, may seem horrible, but it's not. It's just a snap in a life of eternity.

"If I had to get these diseases that are killing me for that one person to understand that they can have a relationship with Christ, then it is worth it. In light of eternity, that is all that matters."

Editor's Note: On Saturday, March 13th, 1999, at 11:30 a.m, Steve departed this earth to be with the Lord.