Friday Night Notes

good to have a sense of humour...


What a strange, and yet, kind of fun night of street preaching. When Pastor Tim and I got to our preaching spot in the marketplace, the temperature was well above freezing (a rare occurrence in early February in Canada). Crowds of people walked the streets, enjoying the milder weather; we had lots of souls to preach to. However, by the time we headed home 3 hours later, the temperature was well below freezing!

When our night of evangelism started, we were handing out lots of Bible tracts. In my first half-hour of preaching, I surely preached the Gospel to hundreds of souls. We had a few one-on-one conversations also: from souls who wanted to know what denomination we were part of, to those who were simply curious about the Gospel in general. There were a few unprofitable conversations, but the Lord was good to us, in that these wicked souls didn't waste too much of our time.

One of these unprofitable conversations was with a very drunk, very deranged Native panhandler. When he first showed up, he threatened me and ordered me to leave the marketplace. I refused and carried on with my evangelism. This annoyed the man somewhat and he did his best to get in my way, literally getting in my face, yelling all sorts of nonsense. That's when Pastor Tim showed up. The good preacher did his best to disarm the man with kind and diplomatic words, but the man didn't have much time to "make friends". Seeing that he was nonetheless outnumbered 2:1, the man eventually left us alone, cursing and blaspheming. The Lord have mercy.

I witnessed something pretty cool as Pastor Tim was preaching the Gospel across the street from where I was offering Bible tracts. In his preaching, Pastor Tim said something like: "the most important question you can ask yourselves in this life is 'what will happen to me when I die?' or 'where will I spend eternity?'" That statement obviously shook a man who was walking by me. It was clear from his facial expression, that those words resonated with him. The man had passed me and was a few yards away when he turned around, walked towards me and asked me for a tract. I was quite happy to hand him one!

Moments later, a woman walked by me and made it quite clear that she wanted a Bible tract. It was pretty funny, she said something like: "Oh dear! I have so much sin, I have to take whatever help I can get!" The woman did look like rebellion had done a substantial amount of damage in her life, but the good thing was that she realized that the messes she was in was due to her own sin. This is an important first step. Hopefully, she will read that tract tonight, and the Lord will cause her to take other steps towards faith in Christ.

Funniest moment of the night: while Pastor Tim and I were dealing with the rough Native man, a sudden gust of wind blew through the marketplace. It was so strong, it blew down our Bible signs. In minutes the temperature dropped below freezing and the wind brought in a snow storm! Shocked at what they were seeing out the window, two shop owners came out of their stores to witness this dramatic change in the weather. One of the merchants saw me handing out Bible tracts, pointed at me and said: "It's probably all his fault!" (the joke being that the "Bible-boy" had called down this nasty weather). About an hour later, the same merchant came out of his store to lock it up for the night. He had a look at me with a big smile; I think he wondered whether I was offended at his joke or not. To show that I indeed had a sense of humour, I said: "You know, when you were out last time, I thought of just heading home since clearly, Hell has frozen over!" (he laughed and laughed).

That's all I got for tonight, dear readers. I have a busy day tomorrow, so I'm off to bed now.

God bless you all, dear saints.


Rand

Labels: Friday evangelism