Battle Log

Thursday was ANZAC day - a public holiday.  We headed into the city for our usual outreach with the plan of moving on to Eastgate.  But because of the holiday, there were a lot more people in town than usual, and so we ended up staying in the city for the whole afternoon.

And it was an odd afternoon.

Speaker’s Corner had a speaker playing loud music making any preaching difficult.

I was attempting to hand out tracts at the entrance to Cathedral Square without much luck, when a lady, seemingly out of pity, decided to come and take one.

I then had one of my hecklers come over for a chat.  We had been getting along well of late, but sadly the conversation “went south”.  But I was rescued by Sophie, who had come to join the outreach, and we decided to head to the corner of Cashel and Colombo.

But for me, I just had difficult conversations with people, who just wanted to mock.  And then a security guard asked me to move slightly, as technically I was on private property.  I gladly moved and the guy even took a tract.

Two guys then engaged the flip chart with Sophie, and a good conversation occurred with one of them, but his friend was not interested at all, and backed away a few meters.  I decided to approach him and try to start a conversation, but as he was talking to me, he just kept backing away, until there was a good meter and a half between us.  He really didn’t want to talk!  I tried one more time, but he just backed off down the street, and stayed there until his friend had finished hearing the Gospel from Sophie (see picture).

So it ended up being a niggly sort of day, from an outreach perspective.  But still, tracts did go out, and Gospel conversations did occur.  God uses our weakness for His glory.

But in contrast, the first outreach of Friday was incredibly encouraging! It was our first abortion + Gospel outreach outside the Hospital.

As I turned up, there were a whole lot of Police, the reason being that Prince William was visiting some of the Mosque shooting victims. We had no idea, but our timing was perfect. The Police wanted us around the corner - which was fine with us.

Then a lady came out of the hospital and I talked to her about what Prince William was doing and how that tied into why we were there. We are against all murder! And we want people to know there is forgiveness by the grace of Christ!

She blew me away when she said she had an abortion! My first conversation and I was able to minister exactly on the subject we were there for!

The signs arrived and we got started and there was an initial burst of opposition.  Security tried to move us across the road, which we politely refused, and then we had some brief opposition from pro choice people.

It calmed down after that, and the 2 hour outreach went amazing.  We had support and opposition.  And Andy & Jason had some wonderful conversations. Yes conversations, we are not there to yell.

Super encouraged that we are doing the right thing - as useless as it seems.

We want to see abortion end, that will only come through the Gospel of Christ changing hearts.

(We are working under the banner of Project 139 for this outreach.)

After this, we moved back to the city where Andy preached in the open air, and then Roger joined us for flip charting in Cashel Mall where some good Gospel conversations were had.
 

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