Battle Log

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  Praise the Lord for an encouraging time of outreach last Saturday.  As our team of six met at the Bongaree Jetty, we were thankful to see the number of people gathered to enjoy the good weather.  We were able to distribute hundreds of Gospel tracts, as well as have several meaningful conversations.

  One family approached the flipchart, a woman with two teenage sons.  The younger son was particularly honest about himself, and they all seemed interested and engaged.  One of the boys was obviously struggling with deep questions, so we gave him one of John Blanchard’s helpful books.  When they came over to our literature table, they each took several booklets, and two of them asked for full Bibles.  Just before they left, the mother said, “There must be a reason for our meeting today.  We were just eating our ice creams, and we weren’t expecting to talk to someone like you.  There must be a reason for this.”  This was a very positive response to the sharing of the Gospel, so we ask you to pray for God to do a work in each of their lives.

  A group of around six 14-year-old girls also did the good person test and heard the Gospel.  Some of them laughed about what they heard, but several of them seemed to understand, at least in part, the seriousness of their position before God.  They realized that they were on their way to hell, and they didn’t want to go there.  They heard the good news, that God made a way for us to escape hell.  They also came over to the literature table and took some booklets and Gospels of John.  When another team member asked them how they could be saved, their reply was to “re…uhhh…re…pent—do a u-turn—and trust that Jesus died for our sins.”  It was encouraging to hear that they had understood the message of the Gospel.  May the truth of the Gospel triumph in their lives.

  Please be in prayer for these people we have spoken to, in particular Ray and Zoro, who are more open to listening each month that we meet them.  Pray for the right words to reach these men.  Pray for those who received the Gospel in the form of tracts.  Pray for many conversions, and that God would continue to bless the work here at Bribie Island.

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God has continued to be generous to us in the outreach to Hobart. Over the last couple of weeks there have been some fantastic conversations and the response to the preaching has been encouraging.

In the preaching there is always people who take exception to the word of God been preached, but praise God there are also people who love to hear. There have been people trying to stop the preaching with threats and complaints. Some of these are old hecklers (Mr S.) and there are some new ones too. God is generous to us though, there has been protection around the team and I and the preaching continues.

I wont dwell on the difficulties though, there have been numerous people coming to engage with the team. A selection of them:

Mr O. – A high school student here in Hobart who regularly comes with friendly questions or rebuttals to my preaching. It has been a real refreshment to have him coming over the last year. He is willing to listen and will clearly and logically lay out his perspective and listen to my responses thoughtfully. He is a spiritual guy with an interest in Quakerism. He spoke to me about what he described as “a real presence” when he was at his final grade assembly recently. As we talked about this and other spiritual matters it occurred to me that God is moving in this young man’s life. So, as he was leaving I recommended he consider the poem “The Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thomson.

Mr O. – A high school student from a local catholic school who has been coming for some time to listen to the preaching and conversations. His first question to me was “Can Roman Catholics be saved?”. I responded that yes, they can if they are trusting in Christ for salvation and not the Roman church. We then went on to talk about the eternal fate of unbelieving friends and people from other religions. He wanted to know if they would be saved? Scripture says that no they cannot unless they repent of unbelief or belief in other gods and put their trust in Jesus. Under all this was a deeper question about Mr O.’s grandfather who had recently passed away. Keiron spoke with him at length about this and prayed with him.

Mr B. – Has been coming for some time now on and off. He has previously varied in his view of the witnessing in the mall. He began to be more open to Christian things since investigating Gnosticism, God moves in mysterious ways. We now have a lot of agreement between us regarding what is preached and spoken about in the mall. Mr B says he is aghast at the state of society, particularly the porn epidemic, abortion, and effeminacy in men. Several of his friends have also come to visit and have stayed listening to some of the preaching. Mr B. has also had long discussions with Mr S. my old heckler and looked at the video’s Mr S. posted online. He noted to me the anger, inconsistency and distortions present in many of those videos. Encouragingly Mr B. is keen to continue coming to listen to the preaching and wants to visit Cornerstone Church.

Two catholic guys – After I finished preaching one day two guys came up and wanted to encourage me to continue preaching. They also said they have seen the team in town for some time now and that they liked what we say as a team and that the work of the team is courageous. A couple of times since then they have given me the thumbs up as I have been preaching.

Praise God for encouragements and opportunities!

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Battle Log for Toowong Village on Nov 26th, 2019 from 1330 to 1500

Great to have Kiateck rejoining us after he finished his heavy Church ministerial projects as well as his own assignment for Theological postgraduate Study. In the mean time, we received apology from Col for illness sake and from Winnie for family engagement. So we ended up serving today with a team of three, i.e. leader Johnny Hsieh, Kiateck Tan and Hung.

The afternoon started with seemingly very slack opportunities close to zero. But in no time, all three of us got as many divine appointments as we use to have at this spot of harvest field every Tuesday. Despite the UQ Academic Semester was over, both Johnny and Kiateck might have around 6 to 8 conversations while I got 10 divine appointments as recap below: -

1) Collin an elderly Christian who have 120 % assurance of salvation faith. But he has not been attending any church for a long long time because of bad church administrative experience. He is a building inspector and he anyway has never stopped sharing the gospel in his trade to bring clients to Christ and making disciple of all nations. I anyway still appealed to him never stop meeting for sake of continuous growth in grace and knowledge in Christ.

2) An English couples took the tracts and was found OK on the two questions though their complete understanding may still subject to deep scrutiny.

3) Blair an Aussie young lady claimed also to be a Christian who originally said she had 100% assurance of salvation but later changed to 80% after being challenged. So I managed to give her the needed clarification to get her back to have 100% assurance.

4) Francisco a Columbia Catholic who has no assurance of salvation that supposedly need my clarification which however was cut short by the arrival of the bus.

5) Jenny an Aussie elderly lady seemed to know all about Christianity but actually not. I anyway chose to walk her to the Toowong Village and did my best to feed her with the right concept of redemptive faith.

6) Karen a catholic background old lady with her niece stopped to chat with me. I soon found out that she has given up her Christian faith because of bad witnesses by other Christians. She rather believes in conducting her life as a good person and to respect others to make their own choice. Therefore, she is also a pro choice people. Despite of such great differences she still was polite enough to chat with me. Just pray for God regenerating work on her.

7) Joe the atheist I met last week greeted me again at the bike station while getting his bike to leave. I was given a second chance to witness with him how I became a Christian after wasting half of my life to believe in good work. He was surprised to learn that I received Christ at Manchester UK in 1990 and had visited his home city of Leicester. Pray that I can have many more chances to testify my journey of faith.

8) A woman with Tattoo took only the anti absorption tract despite I gave her also the Good Person tract. God must have a purpose in it.

9) Emma an UQ student from China was with a group of four of friends. Some of them took my tract, but only Anna was willing to let me walk with her back to home while listening to my sharing of the Gospel. She appeared receptive and promised to ponder on the truth of the gospel in the tract.

10) Sonia an office lady from Serbia. She listened up while I walked her back to office and she appeared very receptive to the gospel.

 

 

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Schoolies 2019 Week 1

My last log entry covered the last two days of the Canterbury A&P Show, in Christchurch, NZ.  I then had the privilege of flying to the Gold Coast to be involved with the first week of the Schoolies outreach.  This log entry will detail my experience of the week.

The first thing I want to talk about is the slogan for Schoolies: Best Week of Your Life.  That is wrong on so many levels.  When I would ask some of these kids three things Schoolies was known for, I would get pretty much the same answer: drink, drugs, and sex.  We know that those three things do not equate to the best week of your life.  In fact, it’s leading to devastated lives.  And if that was the best week of your life, what does that say about the rest of life?  How depressing!  Oh, how desperately is the hope of the gospel needed in this environment.  And so, our team, ranging from about 8 to 12 Christians (depending on the day) would head out for two outreaches: afternoon and evening to share just that.

Oh, and these kids want to talk.  It’s pretty much a constant stream of conversations for the whole team.  Some are open, some resistant, some mock, some seem deeply impacted by the gospel.  Ultimately the results are in God’s hands.  But God is glorified in our obedience to bring the gospel to hundreds of these kids.  It is the power of God to salvation for all who believe.

And because we were out there in the afternoon and evening for the whole week, there were many opportunities to have follow up conversations.

I remember talking to one young man in the evening, and then seeing him again during the next afternoon’s outreach.  He remembered me, but not much of the content of the conversation we had.  So he was given the opportunity of hearing the gospel a second time.  I’m confident he understood the gospel - checking questions confirming - but, for now, he is resistant, with “meditation” being his excuse.

Another long follow up conversation with a young man revealed how he was struggling with suicide.  Through a clear explanation of the gospel, and testimony of how God saw me through my own struggle with the black dog - I could see genuine hope sparking in his eyes.  This young man actually hugged me.  I hope he counts the cost and accepts the gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus’ payment for sin.

Something that really encouraged me was the openness to logic and reason.  I would often start conversations with the building / builder, universe / universe maker analogy and get responses like: “you’ve blown my mind - that makes so much sense”.  This would set up a conversation so I could explain how we know right from wrong, the problem of sin, the good news of the gospel, and the cost of accepting the gift.  And that cost was often too great: some would suggest that that would accept the gift after schoolies - which just shows that their heart hasn’t been regenerated.  But from time to time, people would understand and even say that they would have to leave Schoolies as a result of accepting the gift of Jesus.

The week of outreach was tiring - but oh so worth it.  So grieving to see these kids in such a state, night after night.  But such an open harvest field!  Oh to see some come to know saving faith in Christ to the glory of God alone.

I’m now back in NZ, but the team are still on the Gold Coast for Schoolies week two.  Please keep them in prayer!

 

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Schoolies Outreach Week 1

Hundreds of young people have been personally witnessed to this last week at Schoolies Outreach at the Gold Coast.

Be encouraged with these videos from each of the days:

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Our very first evangelism outreach at a show 🙃 Waimate A&P show. We started the day with just one little camping table & a handful of literature. Still a great deal to learn & improve on e.g Operation 513 Timaru signs, display boards etc, but at least we were there! 😁We had a really good conversation with a guy who admitted he made up hi no s own belief system and had a real problem with God of the Bible allowing suffering of various kinds. He was very polite; frustrating in the sense that he "agreed" with almost everything we said, saying he also believed in "God", even though it was clear that we did not mean the same "God", as we argued from the Bible.

The last interaction at the Waimate A&P show was unfortunately with a group of hostile & mocking teenagers who made a big show of ripping up a Gospel tract :( The weather was drizzling rain from start to finish. Overall it was a good outing & God willing aim to be  back next year! 😀

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Twas a delightful Lord's day afternoon with a breeze wafting across Wellington Point as we embarked on the Lord's mission for a brief time.

     We prayed and left our praying post.

     Lee-Anne and Railee barely made it past the J.W.s 'bad news' stand, when they engaged Samuel, Connor and Jayden. They listened to the law and gospel and interacted in a manner that suggested that they may have had some background 'church' experience. Jayden needed and received a Bible.May our Lord bring His word to bear in their lives that the fruit of righteousness may result.

     Later, a young Indian couple were offered a tract but produced a 'Law tract' that they had received earlier from another team member. They offered to return it but instead were challenged with their own goodness according to God's standard of righteousness. They showed no concern for their sins as their 'god' was different. They were given the court room analogy where the person charged with offenses tries to persuade the judge to let him go if he promises to do better from now on, The judge cannot let him go unpunished as long as his record of guilt stands. They were shown the need for Jesus to be their Substitute as only He is perfect, or absolutely righteous,  and only His death satisfies the demands of God's justice, 2 Cor 5:21.  They kept the tract. May they forsake their false god and receive God's salvation. God help them.

     The latter part of our time was spent talking with 2 of the Maltese ladies we have befriended over the years. They got a bit excited when told they were bad (semi-Pelagian teaching). However we were able to show how they were good but not good enough to get to heaven. Did they hear savingly this time? God knows and He knows that we are unable to change their rebellion against Him 

We give God the glory for He alone is worthy of all praise. Yes! we went home, a bit weary, but rejoicing.

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Battle Log of Toowong Village on 2019 Nov 19 1330 to 1500

The Schoolie Outreach has impact in many other regular Outreach in Brisbane, but not Toowong. Today we even had a new member Gary together with other 4 regular members, Johnny, Col, Winnie and Hung.

In fact our outreach here has been adversely affected by the finishing of academic term of UQ so we readily could meet much less UQ students.

Anyhow, individual member still had enough grace to get significant divine appointments to do His work. Winnie came back after two weeks break from family travelling. She only got one opportunity to share with the "Good Person" flip chart. But I encouraged her to submit to God's sovereign task assignment and took this as a lesson to have patience and to submit to God's plan. Gary had got a number of chances that were good enough to serve as encouragement for first timers. Like-wise both Col and Johnny had got good number of divine appointments especially Col.

As for me, I still got 5 chats despite I kept walking around to take pictures for other team mates for the sake of compilation of Battle Log.
This was a great team Work for the Glory of God sake.

1) Peter an Aussie Christian who rode bike to work but was willing to stop to chat with me. Once he declared he is a Christian, I ask him the two diagnosis questions. He was unsure initially. But once I gave him some hint and three options , 50%, 90% and 100%, than he picked the right answer of 100% assurance of salvation. In this connection, I felt the need to give him some apologetic clarification on the three folds salvation package of God.

2) Stephanie an UQ student from Wales was in her folk costume. She does not have any faith, but was very responsive to listen to my Gospel sharing and ended up fully convinced of the need to receive Christ as her Savior to take her place for the eternal death punishment. I encouraged her to take time to quiet before God seeking for His guidance to be saved through Christ. I referred her to seek support from Power to Change.

3) Joe an atheist who sternly rejected my tract. But he did not reject me to share. So I had a good debate with him in a very healthy and assertive manner. Despite he was still hard in his heart but at least he heard my version about faith and salvation and I believe God grace is sufficient to convert him eventually in His time.

4) Star and Tea are UQ students from Thailand. So they possibly are Buddhists. They showed initial impatience but God still moved them to stop for a short while long enough for me to share the nutshell of the gospel and they left with tracts taken home.

5) Jabe a Qut student from Hong Kong coming to do part time work at Toowong Village. He walked with a non -believer friend but his friend left when Jabe chose to stop to chat with me. It was found out he is a Christian baptized as a baby. His knowledge about the Bible and the doctrine of salvation is completely weak. I gave him a briefing and helped him to re-establish the correct understanding of salvation with full assurance. I also encouraged him to go back to church or at least to get connected with Power to Change at QUT first.

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Thursday and Friday saw the final two days of the three day Canterbury A&P Show outreach.  There were no more slow starts, with many people stopping to chat keeping the team busy.

It was wonderful to have some newbies join the team on Friday.  It can be pretty daunting when you are new so some training occurred, and observation is fine.  When ready, parts of the conversation can be handled by the newbie.  But, to my delight, it was wonderful to see them all stepping up and doing full gospel presentations with the flip chart in no time!  Well done!

Early on Friday we had a mini emergency!  A young lady collapsed while doing the flip chart with one of the team.  I had to call 111 - but the sister of the lady had managed to fetch an ambulance team in short order.  Luckily she was ok.  She was eventually sitting up, and then hopped onto a mini ambulance to be taken to the first aid station for observation.  We are not sure of the reason for the collapse, but it is a reminder of the fragility of life and the urgency to share the gospel.

So many conversations occurred over the two days, it became very tiring and some pacing was required.  On Friday, all I had to do was stand next to the front flip chart for a few minutes, and someone would stop and want to know what it was all about.  One of the team described it as being like a bear fishing at the edge of a waterfall, and just opening its mouth and letting the fish jump in!  Hundreds of people will have heard the gospel!  Praise God.

A highlight from Thursday was being able to follow up with an international cricket player whom I had handed a tract to outside the hospital earlier in the year.  It actually started with his older daughter being very interested in the flip chart - another of the team talked to her, while I talked to her father about the gospel.  At the end of the day, the daughter came back, as she had been processing the gospel message she had heard, and had questions she wanted to discuss.  How wonderful!

The highlight from Friday was probably sharing with two young ladies who had a Christian background, but hadn’t heard the gospel articulated so straightforwardly.  She seemed to grasp that it is by faith in Jesus' sacrifice that saves us, and not our works.  It turns out she had gotten involved with a Mormon church - which doesn’t teach this - and she could now see the contrast.  She was asking about good churches in her area and was encouraged to get in touch so that we could help her with this.

The good thing about so many conversations is that time goes by fast.  And so before we knew it we were packing up the site and praying and giving God the glory for the opportunities we had.  Thank you Lord!

Saturday was a much needed break for me, and I’m now in Brisbane (flew over early Sunday morning) and about to head down to the Gold Coast for a week of outreach there.  Your prayer is much appreciated for the Operation 513 team.  Thank you!
 

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Operation 513 was in Romford today on the Highstreet. The crowds were good today.  Jacob Moswa, his son Israel, Andy Noble  and I were handing out tracts and talking to various people.  

Jacob spoke to a number of people. Andy and Israel handed out tracts to people as the passed by.  Israel, who is 5 years old, has fun handing tracts to the people passing by.  

I preached after a while from Proverbs 16:  A man's way is pure in his own heart.  A man's way is right is in his own eyes, but it leads to death.  But Jesus has opened a new and living way with His blood to the holy places.  (Heb. 10)  I also included words from John 14:6 that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.    

There was a break from rain today, but it was about 8 C and the cold got to us after two hours.  

God bless, 

Chuck Bosio

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