Wow. Wow. Wow. What an interesting night. It was so great.


We met at the Macleans as usual, and tonight we had 3 people who haven't gone before. Bob A, his sone Ryne, and Anna, from Bob's church. Bob directs The youth group that I volunter on staff with at SIL, along with a youth group at his church.(Two Youth Groups altogether). We've been planning a a combined missions trip to Jamaica in March, and it was Bob's desire (and mine) that all the kids that will be going on the trip are presented with experiences beforehand that demonstrate that our aim as Christians is to foster a lifestyle of being intentional about sharing our faith and witnessing whether we're in Jamaica or at the grocery store down the the road, to the extent that we might fully learn the truth in the following statement. "One doesn't have to cross the sea to be a missionary, one merely has to see the cross."


For the next several weeks, Bob will join us and with several kids from his church on Friday nights. Tonight he brought his son Ryne, and Anna a girl from his youth group.


I went with Ryne. Things were a little slow going at first, partly because we went down one of the side streets, where there weren't as many people. I talked to one girl who was standing outside a bar/cafe. Her boyfriend was the drummer of the band that was playing inside the Bar at the same time we were speaking. I handed her a tract (World's 10 most popular things) and made some small talk with her. I let her know that it was a Christian Tract and asked her if she had a religious background of any sort. She said she kind of did, but she wasn't real forthcoming as to what, it didn't seem she was too keen about religion. So I asked, " Religion aside, what do YOU think happens when we walk out of this place, what's out there waiting for us after we die? She responded by saying that everyone individually decided what they would experience in the afterlife. So I asked her where exactly she got her information from that caused her to come to that conclusion.Her answer was essentially, "well, from myself and my experiences". What she seemed to be implying was she and everyone else chose how thier afterlife's would be played out. I was going to say at this point that I disagreed (that my belief was that everyone ended up in one of 2 places, and then ask her if she thouhgt I was wrong, of if she would be willing to even say she thought I was wrong (to see where she was on the postmodern scale) , but one of her friends walked up to her and it seemed that Satan pulled in whatever distraction he could to distract her. Since she was distracted and headed back inside, I wished her a happy night, and encouraged her to read a tract, and Ryne and I continued on.


We also came upon a guy who was outside a bar/restaraunt sitting down up against the outside wall of the restaurant facing the street. I handed him a Worlds Ten most popular things tract, and he took it and looked it over breifly and started laughing. I wasn't certain what he was laughing about at the time, later when he was talking on his cellphone to his friend(girlfriend) from his comments to her he was laughing because he had never been handed a scratch off pamphlett before. Admist the laughing, he started looking over some of the questions and attempted to answer them. He kept looking at me when he would answer to see if his answer was correct,and I told him no cheating. We eventually got into discussing whether he viewed himself to be a good person or not. We went through the good person test, and I'm not sure if he was too happy about the results, as he had many objections, objections which I answered. Often when you answer people's objections, they sometimes respond and say that you didn't answer their question, and I usually reply that I actually did answer their question, they just didn't like my answer. This seemed to be the case with this guy. After hitting him up with the law of God, I touched on grace, but he really wasn't ready for it and hadn't been very humbled by the law. He eventually had to go so I emphasized repentance from sins and his accountability to God, and he went on his way.

We also talked to John, who had recently been released from Jail, where he had served a 13 year sentence. When I asked what he had been convicted of, he told us this long story about how somebody had mildly assaulted his mother, and he had confronted the guy who did it. When he confronted the guy, the guy gave him a good punch to the head. John had a gun with him so he used the gun and shot the man in the head at point blank. I could sense in the way that John talked that he thought of himself as largely the victim in this situation, and that he was at least somewhat justified in taking a life. I knew that John needed to see himself in light of the truth of God's law, as he didn't truly see the gravity of what he had done, so I led him through the good person test. As I walked him through the law and made many comparisons between God's justice and civil law, he was convicted and humbled. I shared with him the good news of Grace, that God could pardon him, but first he needed to realize the sinfullness of his own sin, and confess and forsake those sins and put his full faith and trust in Jesus to save him (from death and from his sins) . I shared how God is just and all those who deserve justice (all of humanity) will recieve justice if they forsake and refuse God's gift of grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. John was deeply impacted and humbled by the law. The concept of Jesus taking his deserved punnishment really softened him. Having been through the prison system, John was also pretty familiar with the bible and Christianity, but I don't think the truth had ever made as much sense to his conscience and his reason as it did on this particular night. As we were about to part ways John gave me a big long hug and thanked me so much for sharing with him. He was so impacted by what Jesus had done for him, as we has walking away, he proclaimed to some of the people across the street in a loud voice "Jesus loves you!" Ryne and I were both in awe at the change we saw in him from the beginning of the conversation to the end of the conversation, simply from having the Word of God shared and explained to him. Praise God!