Battle Log
Sunday, 20 October, 2019
Posted 21 October 2019, 6:27 PM by Glen Richards. Permalink
This log entry covers Thursday, Friday and Sunday. I’ll do a separate entry for the Ellesmere A&P Show outreach on Saturday.
On Thursday Andy & I were at the bus stops outside Eastgate and Northlands - as usual.
A week or so ago, I mentioned a difficult conversation I had with a guy who was drunk at Northlands. Well, today, Andy had a wonderful follow up opportunity with him (pictured) - but this time at Eastgate, and he was sober. It turns out he had been involved with a church for a number of years, but sadly had never actually been converted! He has now had two fresh opportunities to hear the gospel. God willing, we will continue to have opportunities to minister to him.
For me, two gospel conversations stand out, both at Eastgate. They were also follow up opportunities.
The first was with a young man who said he had discussed what I’d shared with him last time with his partner, which was encouraging! But sadly, when I asked him if he could remember the way to heaven, he responded with: stop doing bad things. Wrong answer. I did my best to correct his understanding, but he had to leave, so I didn’t really have the time. I gave him some different tracts to read. And he was interested in coming to church, so I also gave him a card with contact details and directions. I hope to see him again.
The second is with a lady who I have talked to multiple times ever since I’ve started coming to this spot for outreach. She was keen to stop and discuss the important questions of life deeply. As always, I continued to point her to the gospel. I was encouraged.
Friday saw heavy rain for most of the day. Andy and I made it through most of the gospel + abortion outreach in the morning (which I posted about on the Project 139 page on Facebook), before we needed to warm up. In the late afternoon / early evening I letterbox dropped.
Sunday was nice and warm. In the afternoon, I set up my flip chart on Cashel Mall outside Ballantynes. It was a difficult day of outreach. There were plenty of people about, but for some reason I only had two conversations (although I did manage to hand out some tracts).
The first one was with a lady from Russia. I made it through the law with her, but she became very resistant. She stormed off. I called after her and said I had good news to share - but she wasn’t interested.
The second was with a high school exchange student from Vietnam. It was a very long, slow conversation, where I had to work really hard to understand what he was meaning behind the things he was saying. I eventually realised that he was viewing everything through the filter of his happiness - everything was about him. For him, coming to Jesus would be about improving his life - which is a wrong motivation. I worked hard to help him understand the big picture. But he seemed blind to it. Yet I must remember the word of God is powerful. I eventually wound the conversation down; I leave him in God’s hands.
