Friday Night Notes

the cold just won't quit...

It was freezing cold tonight.  Pastor Tim and I keep saying things like: "This is surely the last Friday night in which we're going to need our winter gear...".  Alas, it's still below freezing!

Along with the cold weather, are cold hearts toward the Gospel.  Lots of young people in the market tonight, and nearly all of them scorned the Gospel in favour of alcohol and drugs.  There was a fair bit of mockery and blasphemy, but they were pretty easy to tune out.

Twice tonight, kind women came by and blessed us with kind words of encouragement (undoubtedly Christians), but that was all the positive we got.  We had a Muslim man try to convert us to "the truth of the Qu'ran"; I'm always disturbed at how stupid Muslims are in their "outreach".  On a number of occasions now, I've been told by Muslims that I should definitely convert because many Romanists in Europe are converting to Islam.  That's the argument.  Seriously.  No better than "everybody else is doing it!"

I watched in great dismay a number of young men tonight destroying themselves with substance abuse.  Serious abuse.  Most of them were in their prime... and instead of making use of the strength of their youth for good, I watched them down hard liquor and smoke marijuana.  What a waste.

I also saw a neighbour of mine in the marketplace tonight.  He's a young man, still living with his mother and two sisters.  One of his sisters occasionally comes to church with us.  Unfortunately, this young man was in the market tonight with an older man; likely a homosexual partner.  A different one than the one I saw him with a few months ago.  He didn't seem to impressed with our evangelism, which isn't at all surprising.  Nevertheless, I hope the Lord will open a door for us with this young man, like He has with his younger sister.

It's been a pretty evil week, all in all.  We had a death in the family, a dear brother-in-the-Lord was involved in a terrible tragedy, and tonight's evangelism was a near total write-off.

I will be praying for better days ahead...

Rand