Late Night

Hello Brothers and Sisters
Well Saturday came and Jason, Mark, Luke, and myself (Anne) headed out again. Greg has been very busy with work and battling health issues so he has not been able to come in awhile. Please pray these issues will be resolved soon.
Anyway, we got down to Deep Ellum around 11:15 p.m. which is pretty early for us and as usual for that early in the evening there were not that many people around. We prayed and then Mark and I headed down one side of the street and Luke and Jason took the other side. It was kind of an international night for me and Mark. First, we got to talk to some guys from Croatia. These guys were here to play basketball and let me tell you they were huge. I am five two and a half and Mark is about five seven, I guess, and I don't think Mark even reached their shoulders so you can imagine how big they were to me :) Any way, I started by asking Marin if he had a christian background which he replied to that he had been raised Catholic although he was didn't really practice it. He said that he had attented a baptist church for the last two weeks here in the U.S. and he did not really see the difference between them and Catholism. This I have to say was a great lead into a conversation about Christ. I began by talking about the main difference between Catholism and Christianity by saying that in Catholism when you sin you go to a priest and confession, the priest then tells you to do this and that and you will be forgiven. I asked Marin to confirm that what I said was correct and he said yes. I don't remember that exact words of what I said next but basically I said that we can't do anything in order to earn forgiveness, that we are not good enough nor can we do enough to desire forgiveness. I then asked him to take the good person test and we went through the ten commandments and the courtroom illustration. Marin was attentive and seemed interested in what I was saying. Mark meanwhile was talking to Marin's friend whose name I don't know. I love to talk to people from different countries who are going to go back to those countries. You never know if they will get saved and go back to their countries and start spreading the Gospel. It is very exciting.
Mark and I then started talking to one of the parking attendents and he was from Ethiopia. He said he was saved and then he told us talk to one of his co-workers because he was Muslim and needed to hear about God. He tried to get his co-worker to come over but he refused. Muslims will not usually talk to us or take any tracts.

The last guy Mark and I talked to was Bobby. Bobby was Japenese, although I think he has lived in America his whole life, and he is a Buddhist. Mark and ended up talking to him for over an hour. It was a great conversation. Bobby did not seem convicted throughout the conversation but it was a great time of debate and question and answer time. Neither Mark nor I had ever talked to a Buddhist and we knew nothing about the religion so I was also a great time of learning for us. Bobby's main thought was that Buddhism and Christianity have the same basis when you get down to it and that is love thy neighbor as thy self. This I thought was very interesting because it completely takes God out of religion. I replied that I disagreed because the basis of Christianity is love God and a natural outcome of that will be a love for your neighbor. Bobby also said that the main difference between Buddism and Christianity is that Buddism is internal (the strength comes from you), while Christianity is external (the strength comes from a being outside of yourself). I can't remember how Mark and I replied to this. Anyway, another point that Bobby had was that marriage was a man made structure which I again disagreed with. I said that marriage was an illustration of how our relationship with God should be. In a marriage, the man is the provider, protector, leader, and should love the woman as himself, this is God's role, and the woman in the marriage is to respect, honor, obey, and love the man in return and in response to how he loved us. The woman in the marriage represents how we as christians are to respond to God to which Bobby replied with disbelief that "I was going to take that in this day and age and haven't I heard of women's lib", to which I replied that yes I was going to take it and I didn't believe in women's lib. Bobby looks at Mark and goes " I like this, no wonder you like this" (this referring to Christianity). It was frankly very humorous. Throughout our conversation we also talked about evolution, death, eternity etc. At one point during the conversation some guys, Jordan and his friend whose name I didn't write down, who were also passing out tracks stopped and gave us some but then kept walking. Later near the end of the conversation they came back and Bobby decided to draw them into the conversation. I was concerned as you don't know what other people's beliefs are and they might be a hinderence but God was faithful and these guys were on the same page we were. They joined the conversation which was a blessing and they had a Bible which they convinced Bobby to exchange some of his information on Buddism with them for the Bible and they would both read each others papers and then e-mail each other and talk about it. We left Bobby with one last thought. There is a God and one day he will have to stand before Him and give an account.

Saturday was a lot of fun and very encouraging especially after the rough time I had the last time we went. We were out there for four hours until 3:15 p.m. so we didn't get home until almost four. Thankfully, God had allowed me to get a three and a half hour nap before going so I felt pretty good and energized. I actually wanted to go to Denny's on the way home but the guys were about to fall over so we didn't go.
Some of the other people Mark and I talked to were Mordecai and Andrea, Chris and Matt, Erin, and Damon. Please pray for all those mentioned and for others that I may not have mentioned because I can't read Mark's handwriting.

God Bless